“But, indeed, it must be a great miss for us, the never being able to go to her for motherly loving sympathy. One of the lights that will go on shining out of her life, and will kindle others, is that loving motherliness. If one could only show a little of it, following in her dear footsteps!”
This aspect of her character impressed even those who had to do with Miss Buss outside her own work. Mr. Garrod, secretary to the Teachers’ Guild, who knew her in her public life, says of her: “To me she seemed to be one who was born to shine as head of a family, and to have the domestic rather than the public excellencies.”
Her school can fairly be regarded as her family, for she may be said to have “mothered” them all—teachers as well as pupils—even in the later days, when public work took so much of her attention. Miss Emily Hickey, one of the visiting professors, who came so much less into contact with her than did the teaching staff, puts this well, as she says of her intense “motherliness”—
“There is no other word for it. No one brought into any emotional contact with her, could fail to realize this, and one can see how much it must have had to do in binding so fast to her so many women so much younger than she, both in years and in experience.”
Mrs. Marks says also—
“I remember when I saw her again some years afterwards, and I remember how like a mother she seemed to me who wanted a mother so dreadfully. Always after that I thought of her as a sort of universal mother. There are few women like that!”
On reading these words, a pupil of later years adds to them—
“I, too, wanted a mother, and found so much of what I wanted in her. These might have been my own words, and are, indeed, almost identical with what I have said.”
And yet another—
“I have every reason to remember her with tender regard, and to deeply regret her loss. From the fact that I was motherless, she took an especial interest in my studies and health, making my father and myself deeply grateful to her. I more than ever feel what a friend I have lost. Camden Town is very lonely without her.”