Frances Mary Buss and her work for education

by Annie E. Ridley

Miss Watson gained first-class honours in the Senior Cambridge Local Examination while at Myra Lodge. Afterwards, at the University College Intermediate, she took the highest prize for applied mathematics and mechanics, as well as a £50 Scholarship. Professor Clifford said on this occasion that the proficiency of Miss Watson would have been very rare in a man, but he had been utterly unprepared to find it in a woman, adding that, “a few more students like Miss Watson would raise University College to a status far surpassing that of institutions twenty times as rich and two hundred times longer in existence.”

A case so exceptional must stand alone; but still the question does suggest itself, if, throughout her whole school-life, Miss Watson had been subject to the restrictions judged wholesome by one so wise as Miss Buss, might she not possibly have been spared to work out her splendid destiny, instead of being so early laid to rest in her lonely South African grave?

It is impossible to form any rules which will include the few brilliant exceptions who are a law to themselves; such, for example, as Miss Cobbe, one out of a thousand, in being endowed with a physique to match her mental vigour, who gives an instance of the kind of work possible to herself. She is contrasting the old and the new order of things, or impulse versus system.

“I can make no sort of pretensions to have acquired, even in my best days, anything like the instruction which the young students of Girton and Newnham and Lady Margaret Hall are so fortunate as to possess; and much I envy their opportunities for acquiring accurate scholarship. But I know not whether the method they follow can, on the whole, convey as much of the pure delight of learning as did my solitary early studies. When the summer morning sun rose over the trees and shone into my bedroom, finding me still over my books from the evening before, and when I then sauntered out to take a sleep on one of the garden-seats in the shrubbery, the sense of having learnt something, or cleared up some hitherto doubted point, or added a store of fresh ideas to my mental riches, was of purest satisfaction.”

Without coming to any final decision on the best mode of dealing with genius, to which study after this fashion may be natural, we may at least safely conclude that even in the most elastic of school boarding-houses, a girl so expansive could scarcely find herself happy, or be a source of happiness to the anxious mistress.

But how happy even a very clever girl might be at Myra we may see from some memories of a stay of six months, spent in preparation for Girton, where the writer, Mrs. Lewis, distinguished herself—

“I remember, as if it was yesterday, my first meeting with Miss Buss, now twenty-three years ago.... At the earliest possible moment she had interviewed me privately, and I was deeply impressed by her earnest manner, by the thoroughness with which she went into my former education, and the evident intention of doing her utmost for me. This I soon knew was characteristic of her. We were, to her, individuals—each one the object of genuine interest and real anxiety....

“She talked to me more as an adult than as a schoolgirl, and I remember with gratitude that she invited me to walk with her to church, or on any occasion when she happened to go out with us, interesting me in some social, educational, or philanthropic subject, talking with such fluency and such a fund of illustration and of racy anecdote that I was sorry when our destination was reached. Looking back, I realize what an unusually generous thing it was for all these privileges to be poured out on a raw schoolgirl, and, moreover, on a stranger. That eager, ungrudging, self-spending for others was, to my mind, the most noticeable feature of dear Miss Buss’ daily life.

“In about two months Miss Buss began actively arranging for me to see as much of London as possible during my stay with her. With all the varied work and cares of her busy days upon her, she would constantly ask, ‘Had I seen this place of interest? had I heard that famous preacher? had I ever been so-and-so?’ And every spare afternoon or evening was used to the best advantage, either personally, or with any lady she could find free to chaperone me. She often told me that a teacher ought to have as wide and varied an experience as possible, and all the general information she could get, and should never think that book-learning alone would fit her for her post. Foreign travel, social intercourse, general reading, all were insisted on as indispensable. And she would give me bits of the history of her own struggles....

“The happiness of all her pupils was to her an object of real solicitude. I remember my delighted surprise on one of the first Saturdays at her cheery invitation, ‘Now, girls, which of you would like to come to see Maccabe, at St. George’s Hall, with me this afternoon?’ I knew the week had been a very busy one, and I wondered how Miss Buss could find the energy to be so gay, and to laugh with the merriest of us at the jokes.