“No one who has been brought into contact with Miss Buss, no one who has even seen her portrait, can have failed to be struck by her transparent integrity, her absolute sincerity, her single-mindedness of purpose. However much one might differ from her on a question of policy, one felt certain that the judgment was never warped by personal bias, that it was never prompted by ambition or jealousy, or any vulgar motive.... As an organizer she was unrivalled.”—Journal of Education, January, 1895. The summary of Miss Buss’ practical work, for which I am so deeply indebted to Mrs. Bryant, is best given in her own words, with merely an interpolation illustrating that law of order on which these schools are so firmly based.
Mrs. Bryant begins with an important reminder—
“Teachers are not inapt to forget that the most important factor in education is the personality of the learner. The next most important is the personality of the teacher. So far as others make our education for us, the mind of the educator is more important by far than his method. And this is the more true the greater the teacher.
“Of Frances Mary Buss this was specially true, so much was intuition and sympathy in the concrete inwoven with her thoughts on the educational ideal. The ideal of her action was an emanation of her nature 216as a whole, not a pure product of thought. She could have told many things about it, but she could not tell it all. Her vision was wide, but her wisdom was wider. Hence there never was any danger that her mind would harden into a net of secondary principles in the solution of any individual problem. Practical questions were always unique, each one in itself, to her; and, rapid as she was in action, she could give time to deliberation and careful thought.
“To understand, therefore, the ideal of education under which so much good work has been done, we need to understand, not a theory true once for all, but the type of mind that is creative of right ideas as occasion requires. Nor is a subtle delineation of character needed here. The leading features are well marked, and a brief sketch may give the clearest conception.
“Breadth and elasticity of imagination, indomitable energy of will, boundless faith, unwearied sympathy—these are the great facts of character which lie behind her work and mark its ideals. They are all very obvious facts, but the first named, in the nature of the case, though the rarest and most remarkable, is the easiest to miss in its full significance. One clear mark of it is the memory she has left with each of her friends, of being interested specially in that phase of thought and work which she shared with them. The effect of it on her educational work was that extraordinary catholicity of view which distinguished her, and through her has influenced in many ways the theory of the girls’ school, and the tone of the educational question in the days which follow her.
“One phase of this catholic way of looking at things was her insistence, always very emphatic, on the idea that school and the teacher have to do in some way or other with the whole of life. She would not allow it to 217be supposed that any condition of the well-being and good growth of her pupils was no concern of hers. I do not mean that she at all denied the function of the home in education. On the contrary, she attached the greatest weight to it, but she held that whether the home did its duty or not it was the business of the school to aim at supplying conditions essential for the development of the pupil on all sides—to hold itself responsible for failure even when fathers and mothers had neglected their part. When parents were wrong-headed, or negligent, or mistaken, then it seemed natural to her to set about educating them. Many mothers learned priceless lessons of wisdom from her in the pleasant audiences of her “Blue room” at school; and few, I think, were ungrateful for them. She was full of ready resource in cases of difficulty, and she ever held that the moral was much more essentially her business than the intellectual salvation. When there was trouble with a girl, she gave herself to its cure with the most absolute self-devotion, and one great remedy was to send for the mother, to take counsel with her, and to give her counsel. In all matters of behaviour, such as foolish talk and unladylike—or shall I not rather say unwomanly—conduct she was strict and vigilant. Such things never escaped her, and her manner of dealing with them individually has made an epoch in the life of many a girl, the transition from an irreverent to a reverent state of feeling for social relationships.
“We are of course all familiar with the view that education is threefold, that it concerns itself with moral, intellectual, and physical welfare. But there was a strength and elasticity in Miss Buss’ feeling about school education as all-embracing that marked it as more than the consequence of a view. Each girl was a clearly imagined whole to her, with whose deficiencies 218and needs she had the mother’s no less than the teacher’s sympathy. She was wonderfully patient, and sympathetic, too, with foolish mothers, of whom there are some. She had a kind word and thought for ‘fads,’ strenuously as she resisted them. Forty years—thirty years—ago, the ‘fads’ that had to be resisted were many indeed.
“So she taught us, her teachers, the duty of infinite pains, infinite hope in the training of character. She never gave a girl up as hopeless. If one way failed, then another must be found. She had great belief—a belief well justified by facts—in the salvation of character by way of the rousing of intellectual interests. It was curious to note how a naughty girl improved if she grew to like her lessons. Naughtiness is often unsteadiness of will, and intellectual discipline is a steadying influence. Irrationality, moreover, is the cause of much moral evil, and thoughtful study makes for rationality. It may be—I am much disposed to think it is—that intellectual training effects greater moral improvement in women than it does in men, because a woman’s faults of character, on an average, turn more on irrationality and lack of nerve control, while the man’s faults centre in his profounder self-absorption and slower sympathies.
“Character as the prime aim of education soon became the key-note of the North London practice. It fell in with this that great attention should be paid to punctuality, accuracy, order, method, and the cultivation of the clerkly business abilities generally. Nor should we forget that simple quality of respect for property, so despised of boys, on which the head-mistress laid much stress as essential for girls, and, indeed, a part of honesty. In very early days, girls spilt ink on their dresses, so ink ceased to be part of the regular school 219furniture, and is only given out when required, e.g. for examinations, by the mistress in charge of the form. It is part of the tradition of the place—a tradition that will now be a tender memory—that the giving out of the ink is a serious responsible act, the weight of which should never be thrown on a monitor or even a prefect. The spilling of the ink is an evil so great that its risk should be laid only on the shoulders of authority. But, seriously, this is symbolic of the leading idea that the duty of taking proper care of the furniture should be taught at school as well as at home.
“Nobody but a school-mistress—except, indeed, a schoolmaster—knows to what depths of disorder the youthful mind may descend in writing out its lessons. I remember how it astonished me when, even at the North London Collegiate School, the original sin of literary untidiness caused itself to be seen. Well, from the beginning, serious war was made upon irregularities and disorder of this kind, a whole system of school routine growing up in consequence, much of which has become general in girls’ schools.”
“Order, Heaven’s first law,” was certainly the first law of school-life. The place was duly provided, and everything had to be in its place, an arrangement greatly helped by the Swedish desks—one for each girl, of suitable size—which Miss Buss was the first to introduce into England.
Wherever Miss Buss’ influence reached, order reigned. Everything bore witness to her power of organization, and everything throughout the place, down to the work of the lowest servant, was arranged by the head who said of herself, “I spend my life in picking up pins!”
The highest illustration of this quality comes in the story of Lord Granville’s admiration of the perfect 220arrangements on the Prize Day when he was in the chair. He could not forget it, and spoke of it to Dr. Carpenter, in reference to the giving of Degrees at Burlington House. Dr. Carpenter wrote to Miss Buss to ask her secret, and in reply she went herself to Burlington House and discussed with him all the arrangements, which consequently went off in perfect order.
No girl in either school, who had been long enough to enter into the spirit of the place, will ever during the longest life be able to look with indifference on an ink-spot, or to suppress a feeling of lofty superiority, if she ever has occasion to pass through a boys’ school, and cast a glance at desks or floors there. And few will be able to read without a sympathetic smile or sigh a little narrative of one of their number showing what came of inadvertence on this point—
“One of the direst days in the whole of my school experience was the day I spilt the ink.
“The accident happened on a Friday, and, since the event, Black Friday has altered its position on the calendar, as far as I am concerned.
“The terrible meaning the words ‘spilt ink’ convey to the mind can only be understood by those who know how dearly Miss Buss cherished the bright appearance of our beautiful school, and how she strove to raise a similar feeling in us by occasionally comparing its appearance with that of other public schools (especially boys’), and by having every spot and stain forcibly eradicated as soon as incurred.
“This accident happened one Friday morning just before prayers, and was not confined to a single spot, but included the contents of a large well-inkstand provokingly full.
“Hurrying past the form-table on hearing the hall bell, a long protruding pen caught in a fold of my dress, the whole apparatus swung steadily round and fell on the floor with a hideous splash. There was only time to pick up the stand and pen, the ink, alas! was foolishly left to soak steadily into the stainless floor.
221“That morning our bright little service seemed interminably long, and several notices delayed the filing off of the classes as speedily as usual.
“I was the first to re-enter our room, in which Fraülein stood alone gazing at the catastrophe.
“I told her I was the culprit, and mumbled out something about ‘telling Miss Buss.’
“Her smile and quiet remark, ‘She vill not vant much telling,’ were hardly reassuring.
“Fraülein was quite right; Miss Buss did not want any telling, the evidence in black and white was quite sufficient. She never scolded me for the accident, but was vexed at my not having informed the housekeeper immediately, instead of allowing the ink to soak comfortably in for twenty minutes.
“After a little chat about ‘Presence of Mind,’ I was told to repair the mischief, and attempt to get the stain out.
“There was no German for me that morning. The time was occupied in scrubbing the floor with lemons. During the day several helped, even teachers kindly lending a hand, but all our efforts were futile, and the ink obstinately refused to move.
“Later on, oxalic acid came into play, Miss Buss personally superintending the performance, and being really anxious in case any of the poison should perchance cling to my fingers.
“All to no good! On Monday the room was to be used by the Cambridge examiners, and, as a last resource, the carpenter and his plane were imperatively summoned.
“So ended Black Friday!
“I had bought my experience in the ways of inkstands, a thorough knowledge of eradicating stains, and a life-long lesson to act more decisively, paying in return a bill, the items of which ran thus: the cost of lemons, oxalic acid, and the carpenter; lost marks, a signature in the defaulters’ book, and the most miserable day of my school experience.”
Mrs. Bryant continues—
“In the wholeness of the founders view of her work, not character and intellect only, but physical welfare no less belonged to the school aim. Always, in some form or another, she had this in mind. The most punctilious care was taken from the first as regards 222sanitary conditions and precautions for wet days. Shoes had always to be changed, and contrivances for keeping the rest of the clothing dry—by umbrellas, cloaks, and common sense—were part of the moral order of the place. In other words, it was treated as a breach of the regulations if a pupil came into school with her dress wet. The result was, and is, that the girls manage to keep astonishingly dry. Like other sources of evil, this one has, in the course of years, tended naturally to decrease, because girls are more sensibly dressed than they were twenty, ten, or even five years ago. It is an amusing symptom of the hygienic influence of the North London School that, in my quest for properly shaped shoes, I find it best to fall back on the neighbourhood of Camden Road.
“The idea of regular physical education was early expressed in the institution of calisthenic exercises for a quarter of an hour after the light lunch in the middle of the morning. The idea grew and became more systematic as opportunity made its development possible. When the new buildings were opened, a splendid gymnasium had been provided for the purpose. Every girl was to have a systematic course of physical training by means of two half-hour lessons in the week from a regularly trained teacher, besides the ordinary drill on the other three days. But there might be abnormal girls who required more or less a special treatment, and, reflecting on this fact, there arose in Miss Buss’ mind the idea that the physical education ought, as of course, to be under medical supervision. This implied that all the pupils should be medically inspected, and it goes with............