“You will see that I have never, therefore, known leisure. Of late years, since the work has developed so much, I have done less teaching, but until the last four or five years, and for some years after the opening of the Cambridge Examinations, I was the sole mistress of the highest class, teaching every subject in it—English, French, German, and some Latin.
“After the Cambridge Examinations began it was necessary to be free one hour in the morning, in order to see what was going on in other classes.
“As a matter of fact, I have had to teach almost everything at different times. For some years I assisted in the teaching of model and freehand drawing.
“Circumstances never seemed favourable for my having time to do anything, so to speak, but live inside the schoolroom, and there carry into practice such theories as crossed my mind. I think it would have been much better for me if I had been able to have had a greater knowledge of the theory of the profession by private study, but hard practice has taught me something.”
In one of this girl’s early sayings—“Why are women so little thought of? I would have girls trained to match their brothers!”—we have the key-note of her harmonious life. It was experience transmuted into sympathy. In the stress of her own girlish efforts she gained her life-long feeling for the half-educated, on whom is too early laid the burden of money getting. Then, when occasion demanded, she was ready to give up her own ease, and to undertake the heavy work which has secured to thousands of wage-earning girls the practical training of a thorough education.
Not less plainly, also, do we see, in her desire to fit herself for her own work, the first impetus to secure for all teachers the training needed for their special calling; an object ever close to her heart, and one in which her success will be her strongest claim to the gratitude of future generations.
The claim of an increasing family was no doubt in this, as in so many cases, the reason why the mother and daughter opened the first school in Clarence Road. And then, like so many other sisters, this girl would watch her brothers going off to school or college for the studies in which she—being a girl—could have no share. But, like many a good sister before and since, she would contentedly put aside her own dreams or desires, doing her best to help her brothers. Such sacrifice was taken simply as the highest duty, and thus turned to deepest delight; but we can see how this loving obedience was in reality a storing up of energy for the great revolution of which she had caught the earliest intimations.
It is a pleasant thought to take in passing that this good sister—happier than many—had brothers equally good. If she was all that a sister could be she found in them good brothers, who were friends and fellow-workers, helping her in all the great aims of her life. Her eldest brother, the Rev. Alfred J. Buss, as clerk to the governing body of the schools, quite relieved her mind from all anxiety concerning business arrangements; whilst the religious instruction given by the Rev. Septimus Buss carried on the early tradition of the school. There was a wide gap between the eldest of the family and number seven, so that her relation with this brother, after the mother’s death, was half maternal as well as half sisterly. When he early became engaged to her pupil, cousin, and friend, and thus gave her the truest and most tender of sisters, the bond was doubled, and the children of this beloved pair—her namesake Francis, especially—became as her very own. Her letters are full of allusion to “my boy,” who was her joy from his peculiarly engaging babyhood till he fulfilled her heart’s desire by taking Holy Orders. His next brother followed in this example, first set by the son of the Rev. A. J. Buss, now Minor Canon of Lincoln.
This clerical bent was very strong in the family. As a boy, Alfred Joseph Buss shared his sister’s enthusiasm for teaching, and for any hope of head-mastership Holy Orders were essential. Before he was out of his teens he became the first assistant-master in the then newly opened North London Collegiate School for Boys. He was also English tutor at one time to the young Orleans princes. But later in life he found himself drawn most strongly to the work of the parish priest. Septimus Buss inherited so much of his father’s genius, that he seemed destined for art, having a picture in the Royal Academy whilst only nineteen years of age. But, though in obedience to his father he worked hard at painting, he still had his own intentions, and worked harder at Greek and Latin. Knowing, however, that there was at that time an extra strain upon the family finances, he bravely kept his own wishes to himself till he had earned the means of carrying them out. The story of these two brothers is among the helpful and instructive tales that ought some day to be written, to show what can be done by high aims and resolute will. Of both it may be said that they are all the stronger as fighters in their splendid battle against East End misery, because, in their own boyhood, they knew how “to endure hardness as good soldiers.”
This attraction to the clerical profession was a natural sequence to early associations. The most powerful influence of Miss Buss’ girlish life was undoubtedly that of her revered friend of whom Mrs. Septimus Buss writes, when alluding to—