“Your suggestion of a centre for North London strikes me as an admirable one. I should like to have a cordon of centres all round London, and we seem now to be making a beginning to it. Would it be possible to have also a St. John’s Wood Centre? We found last year that Bayswater was of no use to St. John’s Wood. Whether this district would produce enough candidates to support a centre of its own I do not know.... I am so glad you are taking up this matter so energetically and judiciously.”
In July, 1872, Miss Buss sent me a list of ladies who had agreed to act as the committee of the Regent’s Park Centre. When we remember that the duties included attendance for the honorary secretary from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m., for three or four days out of the six, and that two or more ladies of the committee must be present whenever an examination is going on, it will be seen that this meant work. This first list met with warm approval from the Rev. G. F. Browne, at Cambridge, as showing the interest taken in the then new movement by persons known in the educational world. We find here the names of Mrs. Charlton Bastian, Mrs. Fox Bourne, Miss Orme, Mrs. Percy Bunting, Mrs. J. G. Fitch, Mrs. Hales, Mrs. Henry Morley, and Mrs. Williamson. Mrs. Avery, Miss Sarah Ward Andrews, Miss Agnes Jones, Miss Swan, and myself completed the first list. My sister, Miss J. T. Ridley, was appointed honorary secretary, and remained in this post till 1894, when she was succeeded by Miss Hester Armstead, who had been a most successful candidate in both Junior and Senior Examinations, before distinguishing herself in the Cambridge Classical Tripos.
The number of candidates increased so rapidly that, in 1873, it was necessary to arrange an Islington Centre to take the North London pupils, and, in 1874, to open the St. John’s Wood and Hampstead Centre, of which Miss Swan became the able honorary secretary for over twenty years. If we could have foreseen such results, the name of Regent’s Park Centre would never have been given to the original centre, which would have been known, from the first—as what it so soon became—the centre for the pupils of Miss Buss’ schools only.
There is a letter from Miss Buss, in reference to the one difficulty which ever occurred at this centre, which has interest in showing her on both sides: the gracious and the severe. A girl had broken the rules, and was, therefore, condemned to forfeit her examination, the honorary secretary pleading in vain against this fiat—
“Just a line, dear Jeanie, to express to you, on my own part and that of the teachers in the Cambridge Forms, my and their hearty thanks for all the work you have done for us this week. Everything has gone admirably, and my share of the work was never less burdensome. Indeed, I have had nothing to do with the Cambridge work except look on!
“Do not think me a monster, but, of all the hard lessons I have had to learn, none has been so hard as the one which makes me, for the moment, not only refuse sympathy, but actually speak harshly—if there is a stronger word I would use it. In the years to come, I hope many a woman will thank me in her heart for behaving harshly to her in her girlhood, in all matters of tears or want of self-control, and so putting before her another ideal: that of the woman strong to bear, to endure, to suffer, rather than that of the weak woman always ready to give way at the least difficulty. Afterwards I always reason out the whole matter; but it is always afterwards; never at the time.
“My love to you, Annie, and your father.
“Always yours affectionately,
“Frances M. Buss.”
The following note to Miss Buss from one of the examiners of the Regent’s Park Centre shows how much she had to do with the decision to print the girls’ names, as the boys’ names had always been printed; a step then regarded as a rather alarming innovation:—