“As the school and its head became more and more to me, I grew into that position in relation to both which enables me to give some account of my dear friend’s mind and practice, first as shown in the inner work of the North London Collegiate School during these later years, and secondly in relation to the various phases of the educational movement outside.
“In the head-mistress’ room at the North London Collegiate School there was in leisure moments always likely to be going on discussion of many things other than the immediate business of education in the school. It was indeed a noteworthy fact that so much concentration of work and interest in such an effort as the creation of this great school out of the void that preceded it, should have gone with so wide an extension of interest in other fields, and these not educational fields only. One delightful bond of sympathy between Miss Buss and me was our common interest in public affairs, and the harmony of our political opinions. How eagerly she looked for news in stirring times! how heartily she threw herself into the questions of the day! and how she enjoyed a good political discussion! She was thoroughly imbued with the fine civic spirit, and for my part I believe this contact of her mind with the issues of life on a larger—even though rougher—scale, was invaluable for the health of the school-life, as a corrective to the narrow scholastic spirit which so easily banishes the fresh air from schools, and possibly sometimes even from universities. It is not the particular opinions that tell, it is the contact with genuine public spirit in any shape.
“But it is with the educational interests and the outer circles of her life in connection with them that we have here to do. In all her work she had her eye always on the larger issues. The North London Collegiate School was never out of perspective in the mental picture of the educational field. No other educational leader has worked with more devotion to one special institution, but though it was the centre of her practical world it never usurped the place of centre in her vision. And for this very reason it was at the central source of many educational movements, because she was in it, and was also at the very heart of them.
“The first place among these may be given to the education of women in all its phases. But concern for the cultivation and spread of educational principles and the professional training of the teacher lay scarcely less near her heart. During the later years, this occupied even more of her attention, and she never had ‘women only’ in her mind. Then it was in the very nature of her that she should be greatly exercised by the politico-educational problems before they rose at all above the horizon of the regular scholastic mind. I wonder how many schoolmasters in England came to look into the question of Welsh Intermediate Education, its creation and organization, when the earliest Welsh Education Bills came before the House of Commons. But we used to discuss these things in those days over our midday meal, and debate on the analogy, or want of analogy, with the English problem. The last piece of public work she did was to answer the queries sent to educationalists by the Royal Commission on Secondary Education. She was too ill then to give evidence before the Commission, too ill to have answered these queries if the ideas of them had been new to her, but she had known her mind about them clearly in the days of her strength, and it was easy to go over familiar ground once more. It was so familiar to her that it was familiar ground to me too; I knew her opinions as well as I knew my own (or better, in so far as they were more determinate).”
CHAPTER VII.
LIFE AT MYRA LODGE.
“To know her is a liberal education.”
“I have no liking for large boarding-schools. My ideal of education is large, well-conducted day schools, with all the life and discipline that numbers alone can give; not to speak of the greater cheapness and efficiency of the teaching. Our young women are narrowed sadly by the want of sympathy, large experience, and right self-estimation which only mixing with numbers gives. But no large dormitories nor dining-rooms. Let the education be as broad and vivacious as may be, and to a certain extent, public; at all events, public-spirited. But, if boarders must attend, let them live in families, under proper regulations, of course, and attend as day scholars. Large boarding-schools give a sort of hardness, which I, for one, greatly dislike. They destroy the home-feelings, but I need not dwell on these points; my feelings are most in favour of day schools and good homes.
“We have two boarding-houses. One, my own, is of very recent establishment—the girls go to and from school with me or an assistant-governess. Their education is just the same as that of all the day pupils.
“It is right, however, to say that this plan of letting the mistress receive boarders is not allowed at the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, a large and successful institution, the only (almost) efficient proprietary girls’ school in this country. I can see possible evils, but as I have only just begun, am not fully aware of them yet. I should not recommend, I think, the mistress of a great day school being allowed to begin with a boarding-house. Her strength and whole working time ought to go to the school.”