It would not be easy to find a more attractive sight than this spacious building, filled with its five hundred happy young girls, either on “Founder’s Day,” when, decked in the school flower, we see them in that April mood in which
“The heart with rapture fills,
And dances with the daffodils;”
or when, on Prize-day, in the glory of summer roses, their jubilant young voices ring out in the favourite school-song, as, with fearless and confident eyes, they look “Forty years on!” while their elders, looking back down that long vista, think of the difference they can remember between Then and Now.
It was in this hall, on the prize-day of 1892, that the chairman, Mr. Fearon, drew a remarkable contrast between the present days of light for girls’ education, and the dark days of the first Schools Inquiry Commission of 1864, of which he had been a member. Then, it was still possible for the Commissioners to gravely ask if girls were capable of learning Latin and mathematics? Now, as he pointed out, this question might be answered by the results of this one year for this one school—eighteen passes, with two honours, on the University Examinations—to say nothing of the recent success at Cambridge, where a woman took a place above the Senior Wrangler.
As a member of the Commission of 1864, and, later, of the Endowed Schools Commission, Mr. Fearon was glad to claim some part in the making of this first public school for girls, of which he felt that “if ever there was an institution of which they might be proud, the success of which was calculated to stir the pulses, excite the emulation and enthusiasm of others, and give intense satisfaction to all who took part in it, either as founder, well-wishers, or friends, it was the North London Collegiate School for Girls.”
Then, from the brilliant hall, with its “rose-bud garden of girls,” the scene changed to the dark November day—November 30, 1865, a date to keep in mind—when, struggling through the November fog, Emily Davies and Frances Mary Buss made their way to the dull committee-room in Victoria Street, where the Commissioners awaited their coming.
The members of the Commission were Lord Taunton, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Stanley, Sir Stafford Northcote, the Dean of Chichester, the Rev. A. W. Thorold, Mr. Acland, Mr. Baines, Mr. Forster, Mr. Erle, and Dr. Storrar. To these, as Assistant-Commissioners, were added Messrs. D. B. Fearon, H. A. Giffard, C. H. Staunton, T. H. Green, J. L. Hammond, J. G. Fitch, J. Bryce, and H. M. Bompas.
The work of this Commission lasted from 1864 to 1869, and, later, many of the same gentlemen were appointed on the Endowed Schools Commission, and may be said to have carried on the same work, since they here applied the remedy to ills previously discovered by their researches. There are few of these names which will not be held in lasting honour by all thoughtful women who know how much is due for steady help in every cause most concerning their welfare.
It has, nevertheless, taken thirty years—since that same November 30, 1865—to give women a place side by side with men, on a Royal Commission, when, in 1894, Mrs. Bryant, D.Sc., took the seat Miss Buss was no longer able to fill on the second Royal Commission of Inquiry into Secondary Education. It is not difficult to imagine the feeling of satisfaction with which Miss Buss saw her “brilliant young fellow-worker,” as she delighted to call her, taking this proud position.