“A true friend is one that makes us do all we can; those who trust us, educate us.” “To have friends one must be a friend,” was true of this life on both sides. She was a friend, and she had friends in abundance. Of her women-friends we have had full proof, and we may count almost as many men who mourn her loss with feeling scarcely less intense. Many who are less known to fame will echo words like these from some of the leaders in education. The Bishop of Winchester writes of her as “one of the truest, wisest, and ablest women it has ever been my privilege to know and esteem as a friend.” Dr. W. G. Bell, of Cambridge, adds, “Only those who had the privilege of being called her friend realized how faithful she was to her friendships, as well as loyal to the work which was so dear to her.” Dr. Wormell, on hearing of the fatal nature of her illness, speaks from a full heart—
“The news you give me fills me with sadness. Miss Buss gave me her helping hand and cheering smile when I had few friends, and had scarcely crept from obscurity. It is not easy for me to say what is the depth and length and breadth of my affection for her—in all dimensions it is beyond measure. I grieve as one who suffers irreparable loss, and can scarcely ask myself what of others who have been closer to her?”
350Dr. Hiron says that—
“illness prevents the privilege of joining those who will gather in large numbers to do her honour. But though not present in person I shall be with them in spirit, and in the hearty desire to give to her of the fullest appreciation of her personal qualities and of her great services to the cause of education, particularly of the higher education of women.
“I first met her at Dr. Hodgson’s, nearly twenty-five years ago. For many years I saw a great deal of her, especially at the time when I was secretary of the Girls’ Public Day School Company. From the first I was profoundly impressed by her insight into educational problems, but, most of all, by her devotion, heart and soul, to the work to which she had put her hand.”
Mr. Storr speaks not only as an educationalist but as a friend—
“I mourn a very old and very true friend. I always felt with her that, differ as we might—and we often differed on educational politics—she was absolutely single-eyed, and her judgment was never warped by personal ambition or arrière pensée. My girls, as you know, were greatly attached to her, and I owe her much as having set them the example of a noble-minded, generous, great-souled woman.”
Her influence over young men, the friends of her nephews, or brothers of her pupils, was very remarkable, and it would not be easy to count the number who can add to the words of one of the college friends of the Rev. Francis F. Buss—
“To me your aunt’s friendship was a most valued privilege, and I owe very much to her both on account of her personal influence over me, and the many pleasant friendships she made for me; and last, but not least, that she was one of the first people to introduce me to ladies’ society at all.”
Her letters to her nephew while at Cambridge quite explain this influence. She was not in the least afraid of young men, but was her own real true self always, 351thus touching the reality below their surface pretences. Here is one of her grave letters—
“I am very deep in work, but I manage to find time for you, and to think of you and your approaching ordination. You are about to take the most serious step in your life, and I hope and pray that it may be blessed to you and to those among whom you may have to work during the rest of your life. It is a noble profession, but one that entails much self-control and self-sacrifice. But if you think chiefly of the work to which you are called, and not of yourself, you will be useful and happy. You must not think too much about what people may say or think of you, but simply do your work faithfully and leave the results. You are disposed to mind ‘Mrs. Grundy’ too much, my very dear boy, but this is not a good thing if carried to excess. To be careful in imagination, to put one’s self into the place of another, is right, but this is the opposite of minding ‘Mrs. Grundy.’”
These letters are full of wisdom as well as of tender thoughtfulness. She wanted him to profit to the full by the advantages which she esteemed so highly.
“At Cambridge, more than anywhere else,” she says (for the moment forgetting Oxford), “is to be found the highest product, so far, of human civilization. Men there get the highest culture ever yet attained, and the ‘Dons’ are also the most finished gentlemen. There is an indescribable something in the bearing, air, tone of voice even, of a Cambridge man which I believe he never loses all his life. But the men are most courteous towards women: that is one distinct mark of their training. I have never heard a rough word nor seen a rough act towards women, and I want you to become such a man as the best men in your University.”
At the same time she is interested in the smallest details of the new life, as when she writes—
“It was a great delight to me to see you in your rooms. But the sofa is rather shabby. Shall I send you an Afghan rug to throw over it? Tell me. Perhaps you would rather choose one for yourself?”
But of all the friends of whom she thought and for whom she cared time would fail to tell. Her sky was full of “bright particular stars,” each moving in its own 352orbit. Perhaps her regard may have been most fixed by the “double-stars,” of which there were many brilliant examples. Her “dual friendships” seemed to have doubled strength and joy for her. It was either that her friends married to please her as well as each other, or that she could at the same time include divergent characters; but all her life she was singularly happy in her married friends.
Her ideal of family life was high, as we see from an interesting letter written from Bonaly in September, 1877—
“As I travelled here, on Tuesday, by way of Kendal and Carlisle, my mind was full of you. You remember our journey together to Edinburgh? I left Salisbury, on Monday, in a dreadful storm of rain. It is much colder here. Along the road, it was quite sorrowful to see the sheaves of corn standing in water! Whole fields, too, are lying under water.
“During my railway journey here, and one last Saturday to Cheltenham, I read ‘Kingsley’s Life.’ It is intensely interesting, and is to me like a strong tonic. It braces one up and leaves strength behind. How he suffered in middle life, and how bravely he bore up, under undeserved blame, is all told, and how loving, tender, and faithful he was as a husband.
“His married life is a beautiful poem. Mrs. Kingsley was everything to him. For her sake, he revered all womanhood. One of his children speaks of the happy evenings at Eversley Rectory when ‘father sat with his hand in mother’s,’ and poured out his brave, strong words for wife and children only.
“I esteem it one of the proud moments in my life, when Canon Kingsley thought it worth while to stand and talk with Miss Chessar and me about our school, and expressed his wish to visit us—a wish never fulfilled. His life is so much more after my heart than Harriet Martineau’s, which I have also been looking at. Her strictures on men and women are so harsh—there was little love and tenderness in her nature, and she seems always to say hard things—things which leave a sting behind. I shudder at her absence of all belief, and wonder how she could bear life after ceasing to believe in a personal God and immortality. Kingsley’s life is an antidote to hers.”
353In early days Mr. and Mrs. Laing held equal rank in her regard. Then her brothers—her friends as well as kin—gave her dear friends as well as loved sisters in their wives. Here is a pretty little note which was written on their wedding-day to Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Buss, addressed to “Dear old boy—Dear little ‘coz.’” After describing the later events of the wedding-day, she says of the wife of the vicar—
“Mrs. N. is a dear! She said she was much interested in your wedding, as she had a hand in it, and liked old Sep, and she spoke so nicely about him in particular, and things in general, that I fell in love with her; and then, to complete her victory, she admired Léonie, my dear ‘old’ sister. Now, did she not go the right way to win me for ever?”
She had not lost this sprightly style in writing, in 1873, of the change which took the Rev. Septimus Buss from the chaplaincy of St. Pancras Workhouse to the Rectory of Wapping—
“‘Many a time and oft’ have I thought of you and wished to be a bird, that I might fly to you. But even you cannot guess what the last fortnight has been!
“I was dictating this morning ‘du déplorable sort des choses humaines, qui veut qu’au succès social soient toujours mêlées des disgraces, et que nos joies soient toujours accompagnées de tristesses.’
“My dear boy Sep has a living offered him by the bishop—at last! The great desire of my heart (outside the work—well, no!—inside everything) has been to see him out of the workhouse! Well, he is to go to Wapping.... How true it is that nothing is simple and single....”
In 1881 she writes to the Rev. Septimus Buss on his transference to the Vicarage of Shoreditch—
“I am so thankful to know of your promotion. You both deserve it, for you are model parish chiefs. Shoreditch must be very poor, judging from the little one sees in passing through it—only I suppose it is not damp. Dear little mother, I hope you will like the place. Anyhow, it is better than Wapping.”
354Of another dual friendship we have a charming glimpse in a note to Dr. J. G. Fitch, in response to the gift of his first book—
“Since seeing you, I have looked at the dedication, and am much touched by it.
“It is a great privilege and happiness to know such a home as yours.
“Lately, I have been talking to my young people about women’s duties, and I quoted Mills’ dedication to ‘Liberty,’ De Toqueville’s tribute to his wife, and others. Yours is but another example of the wife’s ‘work and counsel’ which enables a man to do and ‘write things useful.’
“I thank you most warmly for the book itself, for the kind words with which it was accompanied, and I also thank you for the dedication, because, through the ‘dearest wife,’ it is a tribute to all women.”
Also in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Hodgson, she found full scope for the strong element of romance which never died out of her nature. Some part of her holiday was always spent with them, and she expanded to the full in these congenial surroundings. They lived for a time in London; then at Bournemouth, where Mrs. Hodgson went to be near her father, Sir Joshua Walmsley; and finally at Bonaly, when Dr. Hodgson filled the Chair of Economic Science in Edinburgh, each home being more charming than the last.
She first writes of these visits to me in 1872—
“My Bournemouth visit has been most pleasant, as indeed my visits to Mrs. Hodgson always are. She is one of the most lovable, loving, and unselfish women I know, and her home-life is a constant lesson. She is one of those whom I dearly love, and who are necessary to me. Yet, seven years ago, I did not know her. Her father’s illness and death have tried her much lately, and Dr. Hodgson’s absence in Edinburgh throws much responsibility on her.”
In 1858, Dr. Hodgson was Assistant-Commissioner 355on the First Royal Commission of Inquiry into Primary Education, and he probably became interested in Miss Buss in connection with her evidence before the Secondary Commission, in 1865. After that date, he gave his lectures on Physiology and Political Economy in her school, and acquaintance ripened into friendship. Three thick note-books, in her own writing, testify to her interest in the lectures, as well as to her indomitable energy and industry.
In 1873, she says—
“The temptation to go to Bradford is immense. My dear friend, Dr. Hodgson, who has done more for me intellectually than any man, except Mr. Laing, in my whole life, is president! But to go from Friday to Monday would hardly be of any use, would it? And I could not be absent a week. Can we find out when the papers are read?
“I am so driven! It is really dreadful, and I feel so weary that I can hardly bear myself. But when the machine is once wound up and set going, I get better.
“I fear that Bradford meeting will clash with our Board meeting. October 8th, is it not? Our meeting will be very important, and I must have hours of leisure to compare the schemes and annotate them.”
During Dr. Hodgson’s residence in London, before going to Bournemouth, his house was full of interest to Miss Buss, taking the same place in her life as Mr. Laing’s had done as a meeting-point for persons with whom she was in sympathy. Dr. Hiron mentions one eventful dinner-party, which began the friendship between Mr. and Mrs. Fitch and Miss Buss, as well as with himself.
There are a few words to her sister, which show the influence of Dr. Hodgson from 1865, and onwards—
“1865.
“Miss Davies has asked me to meet Miss Clough of Ambleside (who drew up a plan for co-operation among teachers), Miss 356Bostock, and other educational ladies. I cannot help feeling that our new friend, to whom I am so devoted and grateful, has had greatly to do with my position lately. It is almost indefinable, but it would seem as if he had set a stamp on me, so to speak. Certainly the Cambridge Examination did something—introduced me to him, for example—but it is only since Christmas that so many little courtesies have been paid me, officially, I mean. Only one other person so helped me.”
In some early letters we have descriptions of life at Bonaly Tower, which indicate the kind of letters she might have written if life had been less hurried—
“Newcastle-on-Tyne, Jan. 7, 1873.
“I liked Mr. Knox quite as much last Wednesday. He gave me a hearty welcome, and asked most affectionately for you. From what Dr. Hodgson says, he is not doing so much on the Merchants’ Company Schools as he was. I lunched at Mr. Pryde’s house, and then went with him and Mrs. Pryde to the ‘Women’s Medical Educational Meeting.’ For the first time I heard Miss Jex-Blake speak; she spoke well. Mr. P. seems sensible and liberal in his ideas. When you and I were in Edinburgh, it seems Mrs. P. and two of their children had scarlet fever, and he himself was in lodgings, away from ‘his own fireside.’ Mrs. P. is quite ‘advanced,’ and, as her husband said, ‘is the most refractory parent’ he has to do with. ‘She was always wanting something’ (he said before her), ‘or not wanting something else.’ She did not like her girls to learn so much writing or sewing, for instance. Their second girl is to be brought up for medicine. So, you see, Mr. and Mrs. P. must be advanced.
“One day last week, we, i.e. Mrs. H., Dr. H., and I went to lunch with Mrs. MacLaren. Mr. M. is Member for Edinburgh, and Mrs. and Miss M., as you will perhaps remember, are working for the Women’s Suffrage. I met there Dr. Guthrie’s youngest son, a very fine young man, who made a strong impression on me. He is evidently as fine in mind as in person.”
In speaking of her visits, she had always much to say of the interesting persons whom she met at Bonaly, and of the talk she so thoroughly appreciated, well described under the heading, “The Professor at the 357Breakfast-Table,” in Mr. Meiklejohn’s “Life of Dr. Hodgson,” as—
“the sparkling table-talk, apt illustration, and racy anecdote with which the doctor enlivened all the time we sat at table. Without monopolizing the talk, he never allowed it to flag; and by manifesting the kindliest interest in the sayings and doings of all, he induced even the shyest to take his part in a manner that must have astonished him when he came to look back upon it.”
Mrs. Hodgson, too, had so much grace and kindness that even this shyest of her guests was made so much at home as to be “led to imagine that he must have sat in that particular corner hundreds of times before, though now for the first time conscious of it.”
Another of Miss Buss’ letters (Sept. 8, 1874) gives an account of the place itself—
“Bonaly, Sept. 8, 1874.
“Edinburgh, to me, is full of you! So you have been constantly in my mind since my arrival here, last Friday night.
“Bonaly is five miles out of Edinburgh, but, on a clear day, there is a splendid view of town, castle, and Arthur’s Seat. Only, a ‘clear day’ is not a common article, for, since Friday, I have seen little external sunshine, though, inside, there is plenty. But Mrs. Hodgson herself is confined to bed, and looks so fragile that a breath might blow her away. We trust, however, that she ‘has turned the corner,’ as the doctor says she may be taken into another room to-day....
“This house is beautifully situated in twenty-eight acres of its own grounds, and there are hills upon hills all round, except on the Edinburgh side. Two tiny mountain ‘burns,’ or streams, run through the grounds, with that constant blue haze over them—a touch of beauty which we got rarely in the Alps. In these northern latitudes, it seems to me that there never is the clear, cloudless sky which we know as the Italian, but there is............