From the fairly continuous record in her Journal-letters from 1870–79, and from Miss Fawcett’s Diary during her residence at Myra (1868–88), as well as from the letters to the Rev. Francis F. Buss (1884–88), sufficient indications may be gathered to show us what we have lost. From Miss Fawcett we get glimpses of the variety and breadth of interests shared by Miss Buss with the inmates of her house. Lectures on every topic from the best lecturers, concerts, soirées, dances, charades and tableaux vivants, excursions and picnics to interesting places, interviews with celebrated persons, all go to make the reader imagine what the interest of a full record might have been. Life certainly must have been very far from dull in those days, however full of work it may have been. And this was still more true of the last ten years, to which we have so little clue, when she went out even more among the leaders of the educational movement.
Here are a few notes that we should like expanded—
“Miss Buss went to lunch at the Deanery, and afterwards had a quiet drive with Lady Augusta Stanley.”
“On Jubilee Day Miss Buss was invited to the Abbey by Dean Bradley, and was seated next to Professor Max Müller. At night she told us all about the ceremony. She had been intensely interested in the greetings between the Queen and the Royal Family, an emotional scene that went to her heart.”
“Miss Buss had an interview with the Crown Princess (the Empress Frederick), and talked of education.”
“Miss Buss has been to the Prize-giving at the Richmond School. She had a chat with the Princess Mary of Teck.”
On another of these occasions she was photographed, sitting beside the Duchess of Albany.
Mrs. Hill notes a characteristic point—
“She was never satisfied to enjoy anything by herself, and living at Myra, as I did, I have been with her at different times to all kinds of things, the Indian Soirées, the Bishop of London’s garden-parties, the Royal Society’s Ladies’ Evenings, and big soirées at West End houses in the season. In the same spirit, if she had bouquets on Prize Day, etc., she would send them in old days to Mrs. Laing, and, later on, to people who would care to have them. If she had a carriage to make calls, she would take some one for the drive.”
Then from her letters to her nephew at Cambridge—