“In honour preferring one another.” “The relationship between head-mistress and teachers was surely most unique, for Miss Buss seemed never to tire of having her teachers about her, and even in the holidays they were constantly at her country house.”
So writes one of the members of the staff, whose knowledge dates from the time when she was a “very naughty little girl of seven, constantly sent into the ‘parlour,’” where she hid behind the door, waiting till, with a pained expression, never forgotten in all these years, Miss Buss would turn to say, “Marion, here again! I am so sorry,” and then take the weeping child on her lap, and talk till she could be sent away with the kiss that made her happy as well as good.
That this loving influence was successful is proved by the sequel—
“One day, to my great surprise, Miss Buss asked me if I would like to become a teacher in the school! What I should have missed in my life if I had refused I dare not think, for, from that day to this, it has been a life-long pleasure to be with her, to share in even so small a degree her work, and, above all, to feel her inspiration!”
And so many more of the staff had, in like manner, 167been pupils that the habit of “mothering” them went on, and was quite naturally extended to new-comers.
From another of the staff we have, in three scenes, a life-story. The first shows Miss Buss at her happiest with a little child—
“I cannot tell you how much I owe her—nearly everything, I think, that makes life worth living. I do not remember any time in my life when her name was not to me a loved and honoured one.
“My sister was a pupil of the school before me, and when I was quite little I remember longing for my tenth birthday, when I should be old enough to go there myself. I did not, as a matter of fact, go till several years later, as I was rather a delicate child. My first introduction to Miss Buss must have been when I was very small, for my sister used to tell me how she took me into the office, and how Miss Buss set me on the table before her and put my two little feet together, as she told me I was not quite ready for her class just yet. How like that is to her way with little children! I think I must have loved her from that very time!”
The child is a woman grown as we see her again—
“I was in great trouble and perplexity, and in the midst of it went to spend my holidays with Miss Buss at Fécamp. It was nearly midnight when we reached her, but she was sitting up for us, with some hot soup ready, and everything was thought of as it might have been by my own mother. I had no mother then; but when Miss Buss took off my wraps with her own hands, and folded me in her arms, I felt that a second mother had indeed been given to me. Perhaps I felt this the more because I was with her at Herne Bay when the news came of my own mother’s sudden death. It was a Sunday morning, and the trains would not allow of my going home till later in the day. It would have been a terrible time but for Miss Buss’ tenderness. She seemed to feel with me as if the loss were her own. I shall never, never forget it.”
In sorrow, in joy, or in disappointment she was ever ready with comfort, with sympathy, and with cheer. The third scene is given in a letter, sent with the remark: “How characteristic it was of her warm sympathy with all with whom she had to do”—
168“Nov., 1881.
“My dear Emily,
“Old pupil and friend of so many years! I send you my warmest congratulations. I am very glad for you and our dear friend Mrs. Bryant, also for Florence Eves and Constance Dicker.
“It seems to us short-sighted mortals that it would be desirable to have our pleasures unmixed, but it never is so. My pleasure is alloyed by my dear R——’s and E——’s failure, and yours by the absence of your dear mother! But ‘all things work together for good,’ if we will but believe.
“Always yours lovingly,
“Frances M. Buss.
“To Miss Emily Findon, B.A.”
Equally to the point is another note, of which the recipient says: “The whole tone was so strong and so strengthening, so different from the many letters of kind, but more or less worrying, sympathy received at the time”—
“Schlangenbad.
“My dear A——,
“I am very sorry to hear that you and X—— have failed to get through the ‘Intermediate.’ I send you my love and sympathy. Do not fret. You will succeed later on, when, as I hope, you will try again; and your knowledge will be all the firmer for having to work longer.
“You will, no doubt, carry out the proposed plan, viz. go to Cambridge for a year, and leave the degree till after? You will have a very happy time at Cambridge, I know.
“Have you heard how Y—— is getting on in Sweden? How well I remember my delightful holiday there.”
And with an account of life at a German spa, and messages to other members of the family, the letter ends, hopeful and cheery.
It was always delightful to watch Miss Buss with those of her former “children” who had expanded into the dignity of B.A., or B.Sc., and were entitled to wear the gown and “mortar-board” appertaining to this new rank. No mother ever took more interest in her girls’ 169first party frock or presentation robes than did Miss Buss in those early days in the then quite novel attire of her “girl-graduates.” Mrs. Bryant had not been a pupil in the school, but she was young enough to pass for one, and the sight of her gorgeous gold-and-scarlet doctor’s gown was a supreme joy to her older friend, to whom no such distinction had been possible in her own young days. There was never a touch of envy or of selfish regret in this sympathy with the winners of the honours for which she herself had longed in vain—no, not in vain, since that longing had helped to open the way to those who had since outstripped her in the race. Miss Toplis, in her sketch of Miss Buss, in the Educational Review, calls attention to—
“two characteristics which may perhaps be known only to those in daily contact with her. One was that jealousy and selfishness were impossible to her nature; the other, her power of living in the lives of others. The success or distinction of friend or colleague was one of her greatest pleasures. No one could share such pleasures as Miss Buss did, and the loss of her ever-ready sympathy in joy or sorrow is one of the realities we cannot yet face.”
In such sympathy, Miss Buss certainly well earned the right to the exaltation expressed in a postscript to a letter on “guild” work to Mr. Garrod, when she says, apropos of the recent success of Miss Philippa Fawcett at Cambridge, “Thank God, we have abolished sex in education!”
There are some amusing little touches of the purely feminine in connection with these first academic gowns and hoods, which were presented by the staff to its first graduates at a fancy-dress ball given by Miss Buss in honour of the occasion. The hoods were made among themselves, the pattern being taken from that of Sir Philip Magnus, in the intervals of his inspection 170of the school. Mrs. Bryant cut them out, and the pieces left over of the yellow and brown silk are still in the drawer where thrifty housewives keep their pieces.
It may be imagined that no small excitement prevailed among the girl-graduates about the first public appearance at Burlington House in the full dress. On the first occasion of the presentation of degrees to women, the shy counsel prevailed, and the ladies went up in their usual garb. The next step is thus described by Mrs. Bryant—
“But the following year we called a meeting to settle among ourselves, if possible unanimously, the course to be pursued. I confess I resented the idea of being denied my academicals as much as I have thought it hard to appear as a number only in the Senior Cambridge lists years before. There was much hesitation on the part of several, however, but in the end I was instructed to write to the Registrar enclosing our resolution to wear the academic dress if no objection to this course was made by the senate. There was no lack of comedy in the situation—consulting a body of staid and serious gentlemen as to whether we should or should not wear the robes to which we were entitled by the University regulations. However, it was necessary to allay all doubt, and the message from the senate received in reply settled the question for that time and henceforth. We have often smiled over these little incidents, seeing what universal approval was at once won for our ‘gowns and hoods.’ And at school, on festive days, when these are worn, the poor Cambridge graduates—graduates in all but name—grieve because they have no such symbol with which to deck—it does not veil—their femininity.”
It may not be out of place here to give some extracts from letters to Miss Buss from Mrs. William Grey which show how needlework is regarded by the leading educationalists. Speaking of the Maria Grey Training School (in connection with the College), Mrs. Grey writes—
“Rome, Nov. 27, 1880.
“I also wish to give a yearly prize of ￡2 to the school for two subjects. You have suggested Botany and Needlework. But as 171I know nothing of botany, and have always said that needlework should be taught at home to girls above the elementary school class, I should prefer English or French. If, however, you have a special reason for wishing for a Botany prize, I will at once agree to that instead of the French.”
“H?tel du Louvre, Rome, Jan. 7, 1882.
“Your pleasant and affectionate letter reached me some days ago. The kind feeling you express warms one’s heart, at this distance from home, when one feels very acutely too often that one has drifted away from all who know, or care, or are cared for. One’s life feels so useless, and the current of life seems so strong in England that those who can no longer go on with it have a sense of isolation which kind words like yours break in upon most soothingly.
“I wanted to tell you that you have nearly, if not quite, converted me to the needlework in schools to which I have always been opposed on our council—not from any want of realizing the importance of the art, but because it is one that ought to be taught at home. I was a great worker till a few years ago. In all our young days we made everything we wore, and I was so fond of embroidery that I scarcely trusted myself to look at it in the morning, lest I should be tempted to waste my time upon it. I tell you this that you may see how little likely I am to undervalue the art; and if mothers are so foolish or so ignorant as not to teach it, then, sooner than leave it untaught, I acknowledge that we ought to take it up.
“But with our scanty time and overcrowded subjects, the difficulty is very great. This reminds me of what I thought a good thing in the St. Martin’s Lane School—and I believe it was your friend Miss Doreck who established it—and that was a prize for the best piece of needlework done in the holidays. That stirs mothers as well as daughters.”
Those who were inside the University Movement had many a quiet laugh over the baseless terrors of the outsiders who prophesied the dire results to arise from the possession of degrees by women. I remember the appreciation with which Miss Buss repeated a story she had just heard from one of her girls, who had gone to a dance shortly after gaining her B.A. degree, whilst 172the subject was still matter for talk. Her partner, feeling himself quite safe with this peculiarly fair, sweet, girlish-looking girl, in her pretty evening frock, had made himself merry over the lady-graduates, winding up with the remark, “There is always something quite unmistakable about them, don’t you know! You can’t fail to spot them at a glance!” His very amiable partner only replied gently, “Do you think so?”
But one of her friends proved less merciful, and the poor young man found himself in a position to sympathize with another victim, also at an evening party, who had been for some time talking, without knowing it, to the fair winner of a prize essay on some abstruse point of law. When at last he discovered her name, the shock was so great that, without waiting to collect himself, he blurted out, “What! You Miss Orme? Why, I thought you hadn’t an idea in your head!”—a remark naturally treasured by that lady as one of her most cherished compliments.
To those who are familiar with life at the North London Collegiate Schools, knowing the relations already indicated between the head-mistress and her staff, there is something of the same entertainment in one of the press notices relating to Miss Buss and her work—almost the only notice not wholly sympathetic. It did, indeed, do full justice to her exceptional qualities, but it concludes with a remark worthy of preservation as a valuable fossil for future explorers into the early history of the new education. The reviewer feels that he “cannot let the vague sentiment occasioned by her death pass without an honest criticism of her work,” thus concluding this criticism—
“It is perfectly true that ‘the influence of her work stretched beyond her own two schools,’ as the Times says; but perhaps there has been as much loss as gain in this. The movement for 173founding ‘High Schools for Girls’ spread, and Miss Buss’ establishments were the models; the consequence is that a High School education only fits a girl to be a High School teacher—and she could scarcely choose a worse calling.”
It must be inconsistent with the dignity of a “Saturday Reviewer” to explain himself, since this writer remorselessly leaves the whole class of High School teachers—including, of course, those of the “model establishments”—under the ban of this hopeless condemnation.
It could be wished that this critic might have gone over at least two of the schools thus judged, and have been present at some of the varied “functions,” when the head-mistress was found in the midst of her “children.” The teachers holding their classes might possibly have failed to please him, since he still holds the belief in “sex in education”; but the girlish laughter of the gymnasium, where it was difficult to distinguish teacher from pupil, would have rung in his ears with a pleasant chime; or that same gymnasium on “Founder’s Day,” with its show of useful garments for the poor, and of ingeniously constructed toys for the children of the hospitals, would have been a sight to the credit alike of teachers and taught; or, again, if lucky enough to witness a performance of the Amateur Dramatic Club—an association among the teachers—he might have gone away comforted by the knowledge that girlish grace and brightness, as well as womanly thought and goodness, are not the exclusive prerogative of women outside the new public schools for girls.
One of the members of the Amateur Dramatic Club writes—
“Nowhere was Miss Buss’ organizing power more visible to us girls than as stage-manager. In the summer of 1882, for the last time, the Sixth Form gave tableaux vivants on two or three 174consecutive days. Miss Buss herself said she could not undertake them again, as the preparation fell too heavily on her and the staff at the end of the summer term. For us, after our London Matriculation Examination it was only rest and pleasure. They were a brilliant success; and Miss Buss praised us openly for the way in which we had worked for each other, and the pleasure we had shown in each other’s parts. Looking back, I am convinced that it was to her that we owed the kindly spirit which did indeed animate us, and still brings back that summer as a delightful memory. It would indeed have been difficult to quarrel when she was working her hardest to make each one enjoy herself.”
Very far indeed from dull or prosy were the associations of school or college to these girls. Here is one bit of fun, from some “Tableaux” given in 1869, for the benefit of Hitchin, which realized ￡13. At the close of a series of very artistic pictures, the curtain rose on a concourse of European nations, and Britannia,............