Frances Mary Buss and her work for education

by Annie E. Ridley

In the same year, six months later, Bedford College was founded, mainly by Mrs. Reid and Miss Bostock, and among the ladies interested we find many names afterwards prominent in the movement for opening the Universities to women, as those of Lady Romilly, Lady Belcher, Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Crompton, Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Goldsmid, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Bryan Walter Procter, Lady Pollock, Miss Julia Smith, Mrs. Strutt (afterwards Lady Belper), Miss Emily Davies, Miss Anna Swanwick, and Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood.

One distinct difference between Queen’s College and Bedford College is that the first was managed by men, with a man as the principal and women only as lady-visitors. Bedford College had from the first a mixed committee, and the visitor who represented the head might be of either sex. Latterly Miss Anna Swanwick has held this post. Results seem to indicate the advantage of giving women an equal share in the education of girls.

It was by Mr. Laing’s introduction that Miss Buss became one of the first pupils of the evening classes at Queen’s College. The Queen’s College of that day (1848) bore little resemblance to the colleges of a quarter of a century later, but there was an enormous stride onwards in the curriculum offered to its first pupils.

In her “History of Cheltenham College,” Miss Beale gives us a glimpse of these classes—

“Queen’s College offered to grant certificates to governesses.... My sisters and I were amongst some of the first to offer ourselves for examination. For Holy Scripture the examiner was the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, afterwards Dean of Wells, so well known for his Biblical Commentaries, his great learning, and his translations of the Greek dramatists and Dante. He also examined in classics. In modern history and literature we had the pleasure of being examined by Professor Maurice. The viva voce was a delightful conversation; he led us on by his sympathetic manner and kindly appreciation so that we hardly remembered he was an examiner. For French and German our examiners were Professors Brasseur and Bernays; for mathematics, Professor Hall and Mr. Cock; for music, Sterndale Bennett; and for pedagogy, the head of the Battersea Training College.”

The names of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, for English literature and composition; of Professor Nicolay, for history and geography; and of Professor Hullah, for vocal music, also appear on the list.

It was of classes like these that, as a girl of twenty-one, Frances Mary Buss became a happy pupil. Her father’s interest in art and science had prepared her to enter into the spirit of such teaching, and to profit by the influence of the great men who threw their whole souls into their work. What this meant to the girls thus privileged is shown in lives like those of Miss Buss, Miss Beale, Miss Frances Martin, or Miss Julia Wedgwood, and many more perhaps less known to fame.

A memory comes back to me of an evening in 1881, spent at Myra Lodge, where the difference between the old and the new order of things was emphasized in a marked degree. Standing out from the far past, as precursors of the new era, were Miss Buss herself, Miss Beale, and Miss Frances Martin; midway, as a Schools Inquiry Commissioner, was Mr. J. G. Fitch; while the moderns bloomed out in Dr. Sophie Bryant, one of the earliest Cambridge Local candidates, and the very first woman-Doctor of Science; Miss Rose Aitkin, B.A., stood for the arts; and, I think, Miss Sara A. Burstall (since B.A.) as the first girl who had, like her brothers, educated herself by her brains, passing, largely by scholarships, up from the Camden School, through the Upper School, and on to Girton.

It was a thing to remember to hear how the three elder women spoke of the old and new days, and then to see what had been done for the girls through their efforts. Miss Buss told us many things of her girlhood, and her difficulties in fitting herself for her work; and especially of the stimulus and delight of the new world of thought and feeling opened by those first lectures. Miss Beale and Miss Martin, coming later, had enjoyed all the advantages of Queen’s College, but they did not the less appreciate those first lectures. As they spoke in glowing terms of Professor Maurice, one could not but wish that he might have been there to see the three grand women who have done so much for womanhood—pupils worthy of even such a master.

The picture fixed itself in my mind of Frances Mary Buss, in the first ardour of this new intellectual awakening. She was teaching all day in her own school, so that she could take only the evening classes. There were at that time no omnibuses, and night after night, her day’s work done, the enthusiastic girl walked from Camden Town to Queen’s College and back. Night after night she sat up into the small hours, entranced by her new studies, preparing thus not only for the papers which won for her the desired certificates, but for that greater future of which she did not then even dream.