“I am sending you, in a separate packet, marked, ‘to await return,’ in case you have already left town, a chair-back, which I have had great pleasure in working for you. Will you accept it as a small token of affection and good will? I have thought much of you while putting in the stitches, and of the high and noble qualities which I have had so many opportunities of observing during our long and unbroken friendship.
“All Christmas blessings to you and yours.
“Ever yours sincerely,
“Emily Davies.”
As a summing-up of Miss Buss’ attitude with regard to this great question, I am indebted to Mrs. Bryant for the following remarks which embody the results of many a consultation between the head and her sympathetic colleague, whose own career is so strikingly illustrative of the whole question:—
“In the earlier years of the Cambridge Colleges, Miss Buss was one of the most ardent supporters of the attempt to win for women admission to the opportunities and recognition of the older Universities. The part she took was the very useful one of supplying students trained in her school, few of whom would probably have gone on to a college career but for the stimulus of her advice and encouragement. Times have greatly changed since then. At that time there was a small band of women bent on carrying out an ideal which is now partly fulfilled, and very widely accepted, and there were a few girls, growing into womanhood, with the eager thirst for knowledge that defies obstacles. These latter were the first Cambridge students. But the great mass of social feeling was hostile, or at the best contentedly acquiescent in the existing state of affairs. It was for the conversion of this conservatively acquiescent, but not hostile, feeling, that missionary effort was needed, and Miss Buss, among her girls and their parents, was the most ardent and convincing of missionaries. She would captivate intellectually, and persuade morally, the girl whom she saw as destined for the higher intellectual things, and she would educate or persuade the parents to take her view, or at any rate, give it a trial. As a matter of course, we now ask of an elder girl in school what she intends to do in her after-career, and the majority of girls, or their parents, have some idea, or are trying to form one. But in the early seventies it was not so, and Miss Buss created ideals of the future for individuals out of little more than her perception of their capabilities.
“With regard to the difference of ideal end between the two Cambridge Colleges, Miss Buss, with her usual balance and moderation, held that the greater liberty, as regards time of residence and studies, allowed at Newnham, was very serviceable to a large class of students, especially at the beginning, whose circumstances and opportunities did not allow that they should completely carry out the regular University conditions. But she had, nevertheless, no doubt at all that the full University course, and the University degree as its recognition, was the end to be achieved by all who could achieve it. If the University were in need of reform, if more liberty should be allowed as regards Greek in particular, then, it seemed to her, that question should be fought out for both sexes alike, since there was no peculiar reason why women specially should abstain from the classics. But, to her mind, the over-balancing consideration was that the principle of equality in the race for such intellectual privileges as could be won, should be broadly asserted in the most emphatic way—‘a fair fight, and no favour,’ as she often said. She made no assumption about the extent of the average woman’s powers, but she smiled over the à priori views, once so common, which settled beforehand what their tastes should be—for literature, for botany, perhaps, for modern languages, certainly not for mathematics. So her sympathies, regarding the ultimate end to be attained, leaned to the system of Girton College, which fulfilled all the University conditions, and, pending the grant by the University of degrees, stamped each Girton student with a mark equivalent to graduation in all respects. The unlimited liberty of choice allowed to the women students at Oxford was, to her, a great stumbling-block. ‘It is impossible to follow the variety of the Oxford course in all its windings,’ she would say; ‘or to make out clearly what an Oxford woman has done.’ And there can be no doubt that the Oxford women who have done the best courses do suffer seriously in the practical world by the very indefinite character of the general stamp they wear. This, indeed, has come to be an important argument in favour of the grant of the Oxford degree to the fully qualified women.
“In these latter years, however, she, like others, felt that there was hope of great things, educationally, in the development of thought among the younger generation at Oxford. How deeply interested she was in the Conference on Secondary Education at Oxford! It was a great disappointment to her that on account of illness she could not be present. Telling her all about it afterwards was part of the conference to me.
“As regards the stumbling-block of compulsory Greek, it may be worth while to say a word here which should tend to dispel the fear that the requirement of Greek at the Universities will make Greek a necessary class-subject in the first-grade schools. It has not had this effect so far, I believe, in any of the schools supplying students to Girton. Only the small band of girls destined for a University course make it a study. In our practice at the North London Collegiate School, it is alternative with French, as Latin is with German; and it always comes late in the course. We see, however, that it is taught well, very well, when it comes.
“On May 15, 1878, on the occasion of the presentation of degrees at the University of London, the Chancellor, Lord Granville made the great announcement that henceforth women should be eligible for all the degrees and honours of the University. I was with Miss Buss in the gallery; it was a thrilling moment. The concession was unexpected, and it was so perfectly complete. There were no reservations in it, no locked doors, no exclusion from rights in the government of the University, or from eligibility for any of its posts. The time for experiment was over, and the test had been approved; the time for half-measures was over too. There never was a concession more freely or more graciously made, and with a largeness of wisdom and sympathy which cannot be honoured too much.