Further to mark the contrast between 1865 and 1894, we may take a passage in a letter from Miss Buss to Miss Davies, dated December 5, 1865, whilst still waiting for the Commissioners’ Report, in which she says—
“When will the evidence come, I wonder? I am so curious to know what I said, and what you said too. It is very odd, but the mist which surrounds that interview does not clear.
“They were indeed kind, and more than kind, as you say. As for Mr. Acland, he is what the ‘Home and Colonial’ consider you to be!
“I can’t get over my astonishment at their civility; and it is such fun to be told to ‘take a chair,’ as if we were the ‘party’ whom servants are so fond of announcing.”
This is the one side. Wherever it was possible to see “fun” Miss Buss would see it. But there was another side too, revealed in a little remark made by Mr. Fearon to Mrs. Bryant, when the prize-giving was over at which he gave his reminiscences of that November day: “We were all so much struck by their perfect womanliness. Why, there were tears in Miss Buss’ eyes!”
And small wonder if this were so! In 1865—thirty years ago—it was an event to cause a heart-thrill when a woman was summoned, not to meekly receive information, but actually to give it; not to listen, but to speak, and before so important a body. It is quite conceivable that as they paused on the threshold these two ladies may have felt far more than a merely imaginative flash of sympathy with brave women of old, who had faced sterner tribunals to pay forfeit with life itself for the holding of new and strange doctrines.
To say that great events may hang on smallest incidents is a mere truism, trite as true. But we cannot doubt that a real turning point in the history of the English people was reached in the first official recognition of the equal share of women in the task of training the young. From this date what was before impossible became fact, and education takes rank as a true science.
It is of special interest in our own day, when the jarring note of antagonism between men and women is too often struck, to look back and remember the help given by men to the higher education of women. We note that the two most definite starting points of the new educational movement are to be found in the very innermost sanctum, in the strongest stronghold of masculine rights and privileges—the Universities and the House of Commons.
When, in 1863, the University of Cambridge opened its Local Examinations for girls, and when, in 1864, the House of Commons gave authority to a Royal Commission to extend its inquiry into the state of the education of girls, the new era was practically inaugurated. Henceforth women became free to do whatever they had power to do.
Nor was this the first help given by men to the better education of girls. In 1848—the great year of revolution—the professors of King’s College had opened the classes which speedily developed into Queen’s College, the forerunner of Bedford and Cheltenham Colleges. In 1850 the Rev. David Laing, who had been associated with the Queen’s College movement, gave his valuable help in the expansion of Miss Buss’ first small school on similar lines into the North London Collegiate School for Ladies. In 1865 this school stood so high that Miss Buss was asked by the Commissioners to give her views of education generally. This summons was doubtless the result of the report of the Assistant Commissioners who conducted the inquiry.