[7]. Miss Clough, in her interest in Miss Buss’ work, had proposed to the National Education Union the formation of a company to supply school-buildings in this and similar cases. But the council decided to start its own schools, and nothing came of this proposition so far as regarded the Camden School.
This new departure tended rather to hinder than to help on the endowment of the Camden School, of which the very raison d’être was a rate of fees too low even to pay for buildings, a dividend being quite beside the mark.
Money had come in, though slowly, for the furniture of the Upper School, and this was now quite self-supporting, though very inadequately housed. What would, in this school, have gone towards a dividend, went instead to the salaries of the teachers, higher here than in any similar institution.
But for the Lower School an endowment was absolutely necessary. Hitherto, Miss Buss herself had provided all that had been needed beyond the money subscribed. She had not the very faintest intention of fulfilling Mrs. Grey’s desponding prognostications of the abandonment of the scheme as a result of the public apathy. The precise manner in which it was to be carried out still remained to be discovered, but she never wavered in her intention that, somehow, it was to be done.
During the year 1872 the pressure on Miss Buss seemed to be a little increased by this new departure. In June she writes of it—
“Several people have written to me about the £5 shares in the Brompton School, and my ire was rising.
“Mrs. Grey’s handing over all Mr. Morley’s £500 to purchase shares in the new school shows pretty clearly—in addition to the Goldsmid gift—what chance we have of help in that quarter. There can be no doubt that the new school movement is leaving us high and dry.
“I do not feel aggrieved by the Union in the least. It only makes me more determined to act. Miss Davies shuts herself into one bit of work; Mrs. Grey into another; I into a third....
“Mr. Rogers’ suggestion about the Columbia Market (have you seen it?) if acted upon, will prevent our getting any help from the City. He says the market is useless—turn it into a splendid school for girls! I hope the suggestion may be acted upon; if he takes it up, he will soon get the money needed. We shall have no chance at all. The City Companies will vie with each other in starting this magnificent scheme. City men like to ‘live in bricks and mortar’—not to say stone. To live in human hearts is not durable enough.
“Between the two schemes, we shall be swamped entirely if we do not take the bull by the horns and make a huge effort.”