These new quarters had been partly provided by a very timely bequest. A short time before, Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, the poetess, and her husband, visited Cambridge, and were much pleased with what they saw of Newnham and with the hospitality of Miss Clough. Mrs. Pfeiffer died soon after, and her husband did not long survive her. Their money was left in great part to societies and buildings for the benefit of women, and of this the sum of £5000 was adjudged to Newnham College. There were some legal difficulties, soon overcome, but a hindrance remained in the fact already mentioned, that a public pathway divided Sidgwick Hall with Clough Hall from the Old Hall.
What was desired was to connect the two parts of the College by a block of buildings containing students' rooms, and, as finally arranged, a suite of rooms for the Principal, a set of small lecture or "coaching" rooms, a large room for the Staff, to serve as a kind of Combination Room, and a Porter's Lodge. This could not be done without closing the public foot-path. Fortunately, a new carriage road parallel to the former foot-path was greatly needed for communication between the town and the country beyond the College. Such a road, if made, would compensate the public for the loss of the foot-path. Newnham College was naturally willing enough to give up a strip along the north side of its grounds as a contribution to the road. But others were less willing to give up portions of their ground, without which the scheme could not have been carried through. After much discussion, a very satisfactory solution was reached. A broad road, now called Sidgwick Avenue, was made, largely at the expense of Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, with some help from other friends, and the path was closed. There was a curious interregnum, after the dividing fences of the Hall gardens had been removed and before the path had become private, during which tradesmen's boys used to loiter, basket on head, as they passed through to the Grange Road, and watch the students' games at hockey or tennis. When Sidgwick Avenue was complete and the path closed, this anomaly naturally ceased.
In the archway under Pfeiffer Building, forming the main entrance to the College, were placed a pair of beautiful bronze gates. These were presented by past and present students, in memory of Miss Clough. They bear the Clough Arms, and the decoration is a combination of floral and foliate. The designer was the architect of all the College buildings, Mr. Basil Champneys. It was said at the preliminary meeting that in future every student would have Miss Clough brought to her mind on her first entry into the College and her departure from it. Unfortunately this cannot be carried out in practice, for though the Gates are the only means of ingress or egress after dark and form the principal entrance to the College as a whole, there are other entrances to three of the Halls which are used by day.
NEWNHAM COLLEGE—THE ENTRANCE GATES.
Thus the suite of rooms above the Memorial Gates formed the dwelling-house of Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, a somewhat inadequate "Master's Lodge" for a large and rising College, but pleasant in outlook and sufficient in size for all immediate requirements. Needless to say, the hospitable traditions of Hillside were maintained at Newnham, and members of the Staff had opportunities of occasionally meeting very interesting guests who came from far and near.
The Principal's life was a full one. Besides being Principal of the College she was its Bursar—an office which she only resigned at the end of 1919, to the regret of those who realized how much the financial success of the College has owed to her care and thought. Careful and even abstemious in all personal expenditure, she was always ready to entertain suggestions of new ventures. But besides this, she kept an eye on everything that happened in the College. She took all opportunities of coming to know the students personally, by frequently dining in hall, inviting students to her drawing-room and to breakfast, attending debates and little entertainments, and by making the College, both during her husband's lifetime and afterwards, an evidently large factor in her life. His presence, while he lived in the background, was always a help and a stimulus. If he made sacrifices in giving up his private house, he made many more in the time he devoted to the College at large and to students in particular. But with him and his wife, as with the first Principal, such sacrifices were so much the order of the day as hardly to be recognized as such, and were only fully appreciated in later years.
One sacrifice made by Mrs. Sidgwick for the good of the College was the restriction of the time she could now give to the work of the Society for Psychical Research. She maintained the interest she and her husband had long felt in the Society, and took part in its meetings and various proceedings. But she never encouraged such interest among the students, since she knew how many unsteady heads have been turned by a superstitious dabbling in the occult. It would be difficult to over-estimate the advantage to the Society of having persons of such complete sanity and scrupulous balance of mind as the Sidgwicks among the investigators.