So wrote Miss Buss in 1868. She had taken Myra Lodge because she could not otherwise have carried out her great scheme. She afterwards came to see more clearly still that the head of a great school ought to have her time at home free from all claims. Had she been able to act on this from the first, her own life might have been prolonged. But once having taken up the life at Myra she could never bring herself to let the girls go. Even when, at last, she handed the boarding-house over to Miss Edwards, she moved to the house adjoining, and had a door left so that she could have girls to see her or go to see them. She said: “I do not think I could now be quite happy without girls round me.”
In accordance with her own theories, she tried to make Myra Lodge as home-like as possible. And the welfare of her girls—physical, mental, and spiritual—was her first care. To hygiene she had paid special attention, and her arrangements for ventilation, bathing, and food, left nothing to be desired. She always laid great stress on the need of sufficient food, varied in every possible way; and every one within her range must have heard her expatiate on the folly, or wickedness, for she gave it the harder term, which induces so many young women to do fatal injury to their health by insufficient and unsuitable food. Of the laziness and indifference which makes so many of them content with odd cups of tea, in place of regular and proper meals, she could not speak too strongly. The Myra girls were fed well, and with sufficient luxuries to make “home hampers” unnecessary.
On all sides we hear of the special care exercised in the matter of proper food during examinations, or in any time of extra strain. If it was known that the interval during an examination was too brief to allow of a full meal, hot soup, or hot milk, with bread and butter, or scone, would be ready at the right time.
Here is a word to the point from Miss Buss, to whom I had mentioned some child’s complaint against a teacher—
“If there is anything wrong, I will see to it, but, meantime, I cannot but think there is as much real foundation for this charge against Miss S. as there is in the one against me, which has taken much of my time this week to trace out, viz. that a girl now in school, was removed from my house, and placed under medical treatment, because of the insufficiency of food.
“It is quite impossible to trust in children’s judgments until all sides of the question are looked into. Their views are as immature as their bodies.
“Another child speaks in the same way of another teacher, and I am constantly having to bring in floods of light on a girl.”
Suitable clothing was also a matter of careful consideration. Miss Buss would have liked a school-uniform, which she would have made graceful as well as rational; but, except in the gymnasium, she never attained this desire, and had to content herself with at school advising, and at Myra compelling, the most needful reforms. She waged war against unsuitable ornamentation, lace and jewellery in the morning being always attacked.
She would, if possible, have given each girl a separate room, well supplied with the “place for everything,” in which everything would be expected to be in its place. Failing this, she so divided the rooms by curtains that each inmate secured one portion that was specially her own.
At one time it was rather a fashion to talk of the “over-work” at Miss Buss’ schools. Doubtless there were cases of girls too delicate for the life of a public school, who ought to have been kept at home; and there were also cases—very numerous—in which girls who were expected to do school-work and at the same time meet every home claim, as well as enjoy social distractions and dissipations, certainly did suffer. But at Myra Lodge, where life was duly regulated, and the time for study fixed to suit each girl, no one suffered who was at all fit to be away from her mother’s care, whilst many were very markedly improved in health during their stay there.