Having myself suffered, for life, from the ignorance of the laws of health common to even the most intellectually advanced teachers of my youth, I was interested in this question, and often talked it over with Miss Buss. Looking back on my own experience, and contrasting it with what I knew of the arrangements at Myra, I could never bring myself to believe in the sufferings of girls enjoying the benefit of Miss Buss’ thorough knowledge of hygiene.
She fully endorsed the opinion expressed by Miss Beale, in an able paper read before the Social Science Congress, in 1874, where she says—
“I remember the outcry raised when it was proposed to open the local examinations to girls. The deed was done, and none of the evils predicted have fallen on us. I frequently challenge our visitors to find a delicate-looking girl among our students. I do not say we have none, but there are so few that it is not easy to find them. I kept, one year, a record of all the causes of absence, and found that in the higher classes pupils were absent from illness on an average about three days in a year, in the lower from five to six, and in the lowest rather more.”
And from America comes the satisfactory report of “headaches diminishing and hysteria disappearing under the strengthening influences on body and mind of this higher education.”
There is no doubt that the pupils of the North London Collegiate Schools had enough to do. But I know of at least two cases where the complaint was quite the other way. Miss Buss says in one note—
“Fancy Mr. ——! He also wrote last year objecting to his daughter’s home-work being limited. I know that most of the Myra girls finish at seven o’clock, do no lessons before nine in the morning, do none at all on Friday evening, and always put every bit of school-work by on Saturday at twelve. This leaves many an hour free. But parents are the weakest of mortals. Unmarried ‘Arnies’ have will, and carry out what they know to be right!”
In another case a pupil was withdrawn from Myra Lodge because she was not allowed to work beyond the allotted time. Miss Buss writes in reference to this—
“The child thinks she will be allowed, I suppose, to study whatever hours she likes, if she goes elsewhere. I will not allow more than a certain amount. What’s not done then, must be left undone. The consequence is, mental as well as bodily activity, in time.”
Later, she again refers to the same subject: “Patty Watson has left me. It is a good lesson of failure, and helps, let us hope, to repress that ‘bladder of elation’ of which you speak.” And, once again, apropos to some other difficulty: “The enclosed note is very satisfactory. J—— D—— was not allowed to go her own way, like Patty, who, by the way, is a clever girl, conscientious and industrious.”
It may be open to question, perhaps, whether Miss Buss might not have relaxed her rules in favour of this very remarkable girl. But it is also probable that the very perception of the dangers attending overstrain may have made her resolute against it. Miss Ellen Martha Watson had gone to Myra Lodge, mainly that she might pursue study in higher mathematics, and consequently might have expected to count as more than an ordinary schoolgirl. She was, however, of highly sensitive organization, and no one who knows the care exercised over each girl individually can doubt that Miss Buss was aware of all that concerned her, and judged accordingly.