Frances Mary Buss and her work for education

by Annie E. Ridley

Among the many appreciative notices with which the entire press of England met the news of the death of one of the foremost educators of the time, none went so straight to the mark as that of a country paper, the Bath Herald, which seized on the most distinctive point of this remarkable personality. After observing that it is rare for the influence of a school-mistress to be felt beyond her immediate circle, it thus proceeds—

“There is not a county of her native country, not a colony of its empire, where the news of this death will not have saddened the hearts of pupils and friends.

“When she began her great work the matter of girls’ education was still a ‘question.’ Miss Buss solved it in the most direct and practical fashion; and every college for women, and every high school for girls, is a memorial of her labours. A personality of singular charm, and of what the slang of the day calls ‘magnetism,’ wholly without pedantry or self-consciousness, persuaded Royal Commissioners, City Companies, Lord Mayors and Royal Princesses, physicians, and even Universities, that women might be thoroughly educated without any danger to themselves or the State. To mention her name to any one of the many thousand pupils scattered over the face of the earth, was to raise constantly emotions of affection and pride. Undoubtedly she was one of the ‘pioneers’ of the century, and is secure of a niche in the temples of memory and of fame.”

These words are written at the end of her career, but they were true from the beginning. It is most truly characteristic of her that her power was exercised without self-consciousness. On one occasion I had remarked on her wonderful influence, and find her answer in a brief sentence, after which she turns to some more practical subject with her instinctive distaste for introspection or self-dissection: “What you say about personal influence strikes me curiously. I cannot possibly measure it or even understand it. To a certain extent I am conscious of an influence over young girls, but am not able to explain it.”

To those who knew her well, the explanation comes readily enough as we find her power of impressing others to be the result of the vividness of her sympathy, and of the imagination which, transcending mere personal limitations, is able actually to enter into the life of others, no matter how diverse in temperament or in circumstances.

Speaking of her as she was in middle life, Mrs. Marks offers a suggestion full of interest, as she says—

“Her utter spontaneity, her sense of people and things in their living essences, made a very deep and lasting impression on me. And some kind words she said to me—which showed she had seen into my very heart—were a greater encouragement to me than I can express. Their meaning was that she felt I was spontaneous, and had not settled down into conventionality; and as things were very real to me, it was a comfort to know that she too thought them so.”

It was doubtless as a direct consequence of this vision of the “soul of things” that the mere names of things meant so much more to Miss Buss than to most of us, to whom in general a name is the mere husk of the thing it stands for. Seeing through these names as she did, they stood to her for all the living reality of which they were the symbols. With the name, she came into possession of all that went to make up the personality represented by it. Surroundings, time, place, with every other relation, became an inseparable part of any name that once fixed itself in this truly royal memory. To every one who met her it was a standing wonder how she could know so much of the thousands of girls who had passed under her care. That she did know them is a fact that comes into almost every memorial relating to her, from those first simple days when she gave herself without stint to the little band of pupils, up to the very last, when her circle of influence was bounded only by the bounds of the empire itself.

It is not surprising that so many of these girls should bear for life the impress of this strong influence. But still there is something to call for comment in the depth of the feeling thus aroused. Before even the suggestion of approaching death had lifted the veil of commonplace, which so often hides from us the beauty of those with whom we walk the dusty path of everyday life, there came, in answer to questions about the “story of the school,” so many reminiscences of the early days, giving the freshness of early enthusiasm, all undimmed by the daily intercourse of nearly fifty years, that one could not but marvel.

Many of those first pupils have remained as teachers, many others have settled in the neighbourhood as friends, and to not a few this deep affection has been the master-passion of their lives. In the wisdom of these later times it is thought well to chill the fervour of the too engrossing devotion to which very young enthusiasts are prone. But nothing seems to have checked the ardour of these early days, while only good has resulted from a love which has moulded so many lives to strength and beauty.