“To know her is a liberal education.” “I have no liking for large boarding-schools. My ideal of education is large, well-conducted day schools, with all the life and discipline that numbers alone can give; not to speak of the greater cheapness and efficiency of the teaching. Our young women are narrowed sadly by the want of sympathy, large experience, and right self-estimation which only mixing with numbers gives. But no large dormitories nor dining-rooms. Let the education be as broad and vivacious as may be, and to a certain extent, public; at all events, public-spirited. But, if boarders must attend, let them live in families, under proper regulations, of course, and attend as day scholars. Large boarding-schools give a sort of hardness, which I, for one, greatly dislike. They destroy the home-feelings, but I need not dwell on these points; my feelings are most in favour of day schools and good homes.
“We have two boarding-houses. One, my own, is of very recent establishment—the girls go to and from school with me or an assistant-governess. Their education is just the same as that of all the day pupils.
“It is right, however, to say that this plan of letting the mistress receive boarders is not allowed at the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, a large and successful institution, the only (almost) efficient proprietary girls’ school in this country. I can see possible evils, but as I have only just begun, am not fully aware of them yet. I should not recommend, I think, the mistress of a great day school being allowed to begin with a boarding-house. Her strength and whole working time ought to go to the school.”
182So wrote Miss Buss in 1868. She had taken Myra Lodge because she could not otherwise have carried out her great scheme. She afterwards came to see more clearly still that the head of a great school ought to have her time at home free from all claims. Had she been able to act on this from the first, her own life might have been prolonged. But once having taken up the life at Myra she could never bring herself to let the girls go. Even when, at last, she handed the boarding-house over to Miss Edwards, she moved to the house adjoining, and had a door left so that she could have girls to see her or go to see them. She said: “I do not think I could now be quite happy without girls round me.”
In accordance with her own theories, she tried to make Myra Lodge as home-like as possible. And the welfare of her girls—physical, mental, and spiritual—was her first care. To hygiene she had paid special attention, and her arrangements for ventilation, bathing, and food, left nothing to be desired. She always laid great stress on the need of sufficient food, varied in every possible way; and every one within her range must have heard her expatiate on the folly, or wickedness, for she gave it the harder term, which induces so many young women to do fatal injury to their health by insufficient and unsuitable food. Of the laziness and indifference which makes so many of them content with odd cups of tea, in place of regular and proper meals, she could not speak too strongly. The Myra girls were fed well, and with sufficient luxuries to make “home hampers” unnecessary.
On all sides we hear of the special care exercised in the matter of proper food during examinations, or in any time of extra strain. If it was known that the interval during an examination was too brief to allow 183of a full meal, hot soup, or hot milk, with bread and butter, or scone, would be ready at the right time.
Here is a word to the point from Miss Buss, to whom I had mentioned some child’s complaint against a teacher—
“If there is anything wrong, I will see to it, but, meantime, I cannot but think there is as much real foundation for this charge against Miss S. as there is in the one against me, which has taken much of my time this week to trace out, viz. that a girl now in school, was removed from my house, and placed under medical treatment, because of the insufficiency of food.
“It is quite impossible to trust in children’s judgments until all sides of the question are looked into. Their views are as immature as their bodies.
“Another child speaks in the same way of another teacher, and I am constantly having to bring in floods of light on a girl.”
Suitable clothing was also a matter of careful consideration. Miss Buss would have liked a school-uniform, which she would have made graceful as well as rational; but, except in the gymnasium, she never attained this desire, and had to content herself with at school advising, and at Myra compelling, the most needful reforms. She waged war against unsuitable ornamentation, lace and jewellery in the morning being always attacked.
She would, if possible, have given each girl a separate room, well supplied with the “place for everything,” in which everything would be expected to be in its place. Failing this, she so divided the rooms by curtains that each inmate secured one portion that was specially her own.
At one time it was rather a fashion to talk of the “over-work” at Miss Buss’ schools. Doubtless there were cases of girls too delicate for the life of a public school, who ought to have been kept at home; and there were also cases—very numerous—in which girls 184who were expected to do school-work and at the same time meet every home claim, as well as enjoy social distractions and dissipations, certainly did suffer. But at Myra Lodge, where life was duly regulated, and the time for study fixed to suit each girl, no one suffered who was at all fit to be away from her mother’s care, whilst many were very markedly improved in health during their stay there.
Having myself suffered, for life, from the ignorance of the laws of health common to even the most intellectually advanced teachers of my youth, I was interested in this question, and often talked it over with Miss Buss. Looking back on my own experience, and contrasting it with what I knew of the arrangements at Myra, I could never bring myself to believe in the sufferings of girls enjoying the benefit of Miss Buss’ thorough knowledge of hygiene.
She fully endorsed the opinion expressed by Miss Beale, in an able paper read before the Social Science Congress, in 1874, where she says—
“I remember the outcry raised when it was proposed to open the local examinations to girls. The deed was done, and none of the evils predicted have fallen on us. I frequently challenge our visitors to find a delicate-looking girl among our students. I do not say we have none, but there are so few that it is not easy to find them. I kept, one year, a record of all the causes of absence, and found that in the higher classes pupils were absent from illness on an average about three days in a year, in the lower from five to six, and in the lowest rather more.”
And from America comes the satisfactory report of “headaches diminishing and hysteria disappearing under the strengthening influences on body and mind of this higher education.”
There is no doubt that the pupils of the North London Collegiate Schools had enough to do. But I 185know of at least two cases where the complaint was quite the other way. Miss Buss says in one note—
“Fancy Mr. ——! He also wrote last year objecting to his daughter’s home-work being limited. I know that most of the Myra girls finish at seven o’clock, do no lessons before nine in the morning, do none at all on Friday evening, and always put every bit of school-work by on Saturday at twelve. This leaves many an hour free. But parents are the weakest of mortals. Unmarried ‘Arnies’ have will, and carry out what they know to be right!”
In another case a pupil was withdrawn from Myra Lodge because she was not allowed to work beyond the allotted time. Miss Buss writes in reference to this—
“The child thinks she will be allowed, I suppose, to study whatever hours she likes, if she goes elsewhere. I will not allow more than a certain amount. What’s not done then, must be left undone. The consequence is, mental as well as bodily activity, in time.”
Later, she again refers to the same subject: “Patty Watson has left me. It is a good lesson of failure, and helps, let us hope, to repress that ‘bladder of elation’ of which you speak.” And, once again, apropos to some other difficulty: “The enclosed note is very satisfactory. J—— D—— was not allowed to go her own way, like Patty, who, by the way, is a clever girl, conscientious and industrious.”
It may be open to question, perhaps, whether Miss Buss might not have relaxed her rules in favour of this very remarkable girl. But it is also probable that the very perception of the dangers attending overstrain may have made her resolute against it. Miss Ellen Martha Watson had gone to Myra Lodge, mainly that she might pursue study in higher mathematics, and consequently might have expected to count as more than an ordinary schoolgirl. She was, however, of highly sensitive organization, and no one who knows the care 186exercised over each girl individually can doubt that Miss Buss was aware of all that concerned her, and judged accordingly.
Miss Watson gained first-class honours in the Senior Cambridge Local Examination while at Myra Lodge. Afterwards, at the University College Intermediate, she took the highest prize for applied mathematics and mechanics, as well as a ￡50 Scholarship. Professor Clifford said on this occasion that the proficiency of Miss Watson would have been very rare in a man, but he had been utterly unprepared to find it in a woman, adding that, “a few more students like Miss Watson would raise University College to a status far surpassing that of institutions twenty times as rich and two hundred times longer in existence.”
A case so exceptional must stand alone; but still the question does suggest itself, if, throughout her whole school-life, Miss Watson had been subject to the restrictions judged wholesome by one so wise as Miss Buss, might she not possibly have been spared to work out her splendid destiny, instead of being so early laid to rest in her lonely South African grave?
It is impossible to form any rules which will include the few brilliant exceptions who are a law to themselves; such, for example, as Miss Cobbe, one out of a thousand, in being endowed with a physique to match her mental vigour, who gives an instance of the kind of work possible to herself. She is contrasting the old and the new order of things, or impulse versus system.
“I can make no sort of pretensions to have acquired, even in my best days, anything like the instruction which the young students of Girton and Newnham and Lady Margaret Hall are so fortunate as to possess; and much I envy their opportunities for acquiring accurate scholarship. But I know not whether the method they follow can, on the whole, convey as much of the pure 187delight of learning as did my solitary early studies. When the summer morning sun rose over the trees and shone into my bedroom, finding me still over my books from the evening before, and when I then sauntered out to take a sleep on one of the garden-seats in the shrubbery, the sense of having learnt something, or cleared up some hitherto doubted point, or added a store of fresh ideas to my mental riches, was of purest satisfaction.”
Without coming to any final decision on the best mode of dealing with genius, to which study after this fashion may be natural, we may at least safely conclude that even in the most elastic of school boarding-houses, a girl so expansive could scarcely find herself happy, or be a source of happiness to the anxious mistress.
But how happy even a very clever girl might be at Myra we may see from some memories of a stay of six months, spent in preparation for Girton, where the writer, Mrs. Lewis, distinguished herself—
“I remember, as if it was yesterday, my first meeting with Miss Buss, now twenty-three years ago.... At the earliest possible moment she had interviewed me privately, and I was deeply impressed by her earnest manner, by the thoroughness with which she went into my former education, and the evident intention of doing her utmost for me. This I soon knew was characteristic of her. We were, to her, individuals—each one the object of genuine interest and real anxiety....
“She talked to me more as an adult than as a schoolgirl, and I remember with gratitude that she invited me to walk with her to church, or on any occasion when she happened to go out with us, interesting me in some social, educational, or philanthropic subject, talking with such fluency and such a fund of illustration and of racy anecdote that I was sorry when our destination was reached. Looking back, I realize what an unusually generous thing it was for all these privileges to be poured out on a raw schoolgirl, and, moreover, on a stranger. That eager, ungrudging, self-spending for others was, to my mind, the most noticeable feature of dear Miss Buss’ daily life.
“In about two months Miss Buss began actively arranging for me to see as much of London as possible during my stay with her. 188With all the varied work and cares of her busy days upon her, she would constantly ask, ‘Had I seen this place of interest? had I heard that famous preacher? had I ever been so-and-so?’ And every spare afternoon or evening was used to the best advantage, either personally, or with any lady she could find free to chaperone me. She often told me that a teacher ought to have as wide and varied an experience as possible, and all the general information she could get, and should never think that book-learning alone would fit her for her post. Foreign travel, social intercourse, general reading, all were insisted on as indispensable. And she would give me bits of the history of her own struggles....
“The happiness of all her pupils was to her an object of real solicitude. I remember my delighted surprise on one of the first Saturdays at her cheery invitation, ‘Now, girls, which of you would like to come to see Maccabe, at St. George’s Hall, with me this afternoon?’ I knew the week had been a very busy one, and I wondered how Miss Buss could find the energy to be so gay, and to laugh with the merriest of us at the jokes.
“Looking back, I realize that I cannot over-estimate the value of such association with that noble, earnest, sympathetic nature. And, certainly, I have never seen any one who so equally combined earnestness of purpose, untiring industry, indomitable perseverance, and shrewd common sense, with the perfection of womanly sympathy.”
Of the intellectually stimulating effect of this association another pupil speaks strongly—
“Although it is quite impossible for any of us to measure the great influence for good that Miss Buss has exerted over the whole of our lives, in one particular I have specially felt the great help her training has been to me personally, viz. the choice of books and taste for good literature.
“I can remember, quite early in my school-life, the cutting satire with which Miss Buss would criticize some of the modern trash in the shape of literature, so that one felt (and that feeling I have never lost) one simply could not read such books. On the other hand, she always recommended plenty of good wholesome books to help us in the choice of our reading; while, in pointing out passages, or in explaining allusions, she roused interest, and cultivated the taste for all that is good and pure in literature.
“She applied to books, as to other things, her favourite motto: ‘Aim high, and you will strike high!’
189“She seemed, in all her teaching, to agree with the poet Lowell, that ‘not failure, but low aim, is crime!’
“A favourite subject for debate was the Ethics of Waste, showing that everything wantonly destroyed is a loss to the community. The wickedness of waste of food seems to have excited much attention, and set the girls, among themselves, to discuss and make calculations concerning it which served—as they were meant to do—to give safe and harmless topics for talk.
“Akin to this was the effort to make girls look into the future, and not to trust to what might happen, but to prepare by present action in acquiring habits of decision and industry. She thought that every woman should be independent, and deprecated dependence on brothers or other friends, so long as effort was possible on their own part.”
Another “Myra girl” seizes on a point very characteristic, when she says—
“To schoolgirl and friend alike, Miss Buss was entirely natural. She was too great to think of, or to need, exterior aids to respect. Forgetful of herself, she was ever ready to share her thoughts or memories with all who could be interested or helped by them.
“In her conversation she avoided all personal gossip. Never did an unkind or hasty word about a fellow-being cross her lips, and often in the school addresses, she told us that by chatter the ninth commandment was easily broken, and that topics about acquaintances begun in innocence, ended only in harm and hurt to others.”
There is a story of her that, one day, after a visitor had gone, Miss Buss seemed very uncomfortable, and finally said, “I feel as if I had been stung all over; that talk has left so many stings behind it!” It was her rule, carefully kept, never to repeat unpleasant things; but she never forgot to mention any kind word said about others.
Miss Fawcett speaks of Miss Buss’ sympathy with young life and its needs, and she adds—
“The girls were a great happiness to Miss Buss. If one or other did give trouble through temper—and this did worry her—we 190would sometimes comfort each other by reflecting how many of them did nothing of the kind, but went on tranquilly and happily. ‘Yes,’ she would say, ‘it is the old story; the ninety and nine are apt to be forgotten in the struggle with the one!’ And she would cheer up.”
She was very indulgent to her girls at the half-term holidays. Besides sending them for pleasant excursions, she liked them to be able to go into the kitchen to make toffee,............