“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 the 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 founding ‘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 consecutive 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, coming to life, advanced to the front, with an appeal written by an “Old Girl,” an appeal not quite obsolete even in our day—