[22]. In a paper found in Miss Buss’ desk there is gratifying proof of the satisfaction it would have given her to know of the choice of her successor—
“I know Mrs. Bryant well, and think her the most competent woman in the whole range of my acquaintance to take up my work after me. She is bright, accomplished, energetic, and earnest. She is amiable and loving, and, above all, has vital force. She has, indeed, ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body.’ Pages of writing could not express more strongly my conviction that she is the one woman who would and could carry on the school in the same spirit as it is carried on now. Her fellow-workers would also be loyal to her, and she would be considerate about them.
(Signed) “Frances Mary Buss.
“Myra Lodge, Feb. 3, 1878.”
On Foundation Day (April 4)—henceforth to be known as Founder’s Day—the sense of loss was manifest in the black dresses of the staff, and in the absence of the usual daffodils with which the Hall had been gay in past times. The needlework was shown as usual, but in place of the entertainment of other years, there was an organ recital, followed by a selection of sacred music, ending with the hymn, so deeply impressive to all there, “The saints of God, their conflict passed.”
On the Prize Day (June 27) there was a special appropriateness in the fact that in Professor Jebb of Cambridge, who occupied the chair, there should have been so distinguished a representative of the University which had been so much to one who had laboured to open for others the way thither which she could not herself follow.
In the presence of Lady Frederick Cavendish, who gave the prizes on this last day, there was also a very special fitness, not only as a very active member of the Council of the Girls’ Public Day Schools Company—a work made possible in the beginning by Miss Buss’ success in her schools—but still more as the daughter of Lord Lyttelton, one of the earliest friends to the higher education of girls in general, and, in particular, to the North London Collegiate and Camden Schools for girls.
The day was further marked as the close of the first great period of the School’s history by the absence, not only of the Head herself, but of two of her foremost helpers—the Bishop of Winchester and Mr. Elliott—the one suffering from the illness so soon to prove fatal, and the other from sudden bereavement. So far back as 1879 Miss Buss, in regretting the absence on the opening of the new Hall of the Rev. Charles Lee, had thus written of these three friends—
“For years past Mr. Lee was the one person who was guide, philosopher, and friend; who gave up his time, and who, with Mr. Elliott and Mr. Thorold, met constantly in Camden Street, looked after Myra Lodge as well as 202, worked up the law questions (Mr. Elliott has always given his law knowledge to me and to the movement from the beginning), and in fact worked hard when friends were few and success was apparently hopeless.”
Mr. Lee’s removal from London deprived Miss Buss of his valuable help, but for fifteen years longer Dr. Thorold and Mr. Elliott were by her side in any time of need, and their kind and genial speeches had come to be an essential part of Prize Day rejoicing.