“Are we not getting business-like! Mr. Forster’s suggestion of a lecture from Professor J. R. Seeley is a good one, but I doubt whether we should get as much as £100 from the lecture; and as Professor Seeley is already largely pledged to the Hitchin College, I also doubt whether he would lecture for our movement only. But we can try. I know both Professor and Mrs. Seeley. They have visited me at Myra, and I have visited them. Mrs. Seeley is a niece of Mrs. De Morgan.
“Your loving
“Arnie.”
This last suggestion came to nothing, but Mrs. Grey wrote to the Times, setting forth in the strongest way possible the claim of girls in general to the help so freely given to boys, as well as the special claim of the Camden School, not only as recognition of Miss Buss’ services, but from the fact that the school was in full work, and therefore proved conclusively not only the need for such a school, but also that this need could be met. She told how Miss Buss, “with a self-sacrifice as rare as it is noble, had voluntarily handed over the fruits of twenty years’ labours” for the benefit of girls, and then, for these same girls, asks that Miss Buss’ generosity may be supplemented, for the two schools, by a quarter of the amount given to the one school for boys in Cowper Street, since, otherwise, it is to be feared that—
“these schools and their able and devoted principal, Miss Buss, must break down under the strain put upon them, and a great work which has already done so much for the better training of girls, and promises to do more, will have to be abandoned.”
Among my correspondence of this date, I find a note respecting this appeal which might account in some measure for the small response it received—
“The Times won’t do things gracefully. I enclose you Mrs. Grey’s admirable appeal on behalf of the Camden Schools, which I cut out of the outer sheet of the issue of yesterday. The redeeming feature is that the letter is what printers call ‘displayed.’ Unfortunately, however, people who buy the paper at the bookstalls frequently leave the advertisement part behind!”
Within a month after this first letter Mrs. Grey wrote again to the Times, stating in detail the response given to Mr. Rogers’ appeals for boys, and giving as her own experience, concerning the appeal for girls of the same class, the following most noteworthy result:—
“The answer to my appeal for the Camden Town Schools for Girls, founded by the energy, ability, and generosity of Miss Buss, has been £47 2s. 6d., of which £20 would have been given whether my letter had been written or not; so that the net result of my appeal to this great Metropolis on behalf of the sisters of the boys for whom such a magnificent endowment has been received has been, in fact, just £27 2s. 6d.”
This second letter brought in about £100 more, raising the result of Mrs. Grey’s appeal to £147 2s. 6d. The total amount collected by all, after three years of hard work, came to not more than £700.