‘I have been thinking what I could write to you about Miss Buss. I don’t think I could send you anything that would help in an article, or say much more than I have in the Guardian. I am spoken of as her life-long friend, but I did not know her until long after I came to Cheltenham, a little before you joined our Council. It is said in many papers that I attended with her the evening classes at Queen’s College. I never did. She assisted at the evolution which transformed our governing body from a local Committee to what it is now, and by getting an enlarged Council we were saved from dying of atrophy....
‘From that time we were intimately associated in educational movements, and I ever felt that she was utterly to be trusted never to think,—much less to do anything but what was true, straightforward, unselfish. She was deeply, unostentatiously religious, lived in the spirit of prayer, and had the love of God in its twofold sense ever guiding her thought and actions. Often have we knelt together, at her request, the last thing at night and said together the Veni Creator.
‘If I spoke the other day of troubles with the governing bodies—it was not from anything definite that she said to me; but she has often, to allay my impatience, repeated what one of her Governors said: “Do you think we come here to register your decrees?” She received it as a deserved reproof, though, of course, she must have known what was best for the school, and never desired her selfish good,—only that of the School.
‘The large view she took of the general outlook for the growing up teachers struck me much. The provision for the future, the opening of new occupations, the health and bodily development. Her gymnasium, I think, she herself built and gave to the school.... She had a lady doctor to examine the girls, weigh them, etc., etc.
‘The formation of the Head-mistresses’ Association was entirely due to her. The first meeting, and, I think, the second was held at Myra Lodge. She was very anxious about the “Teachers’ Guild.”
‘I sat with her on the Council of the Church Schools’ Company, and was surprised at the amount of time and thought she gave to it. With such solicitude she used to say, “My dear, we must help these young Head-mistresses.” Whenever any school-mistress got into difficulties she was of such sympathy and help.
‘Then she tried so much to help her old girls, to promote the love of reading in her staff, to call out their helpfulness in many ways. That exhibition of things made that cost nothing, was a very original idea, and taught economy by an object lesson....
‘The ways in which she used to help poor girls were hardly known to any one; clothes she used to get sent to them, and she had friends to whom she could mention cases where money help was needed and get it. Then she was not one to give up because she could not influence people by what were for her the highest motives; but appealed to the best in them, would give ethics when she could not give religion, and when she spoke of wrong, it was with a sorrow which covered the indignation.
‘There was a real solicitude, in spite of her many occupations, to help all teachers. She would get books to send round to other schools to help them, and never seemed to think of any being rivals, but rather fellow-workers.
‘But you must know most of what I am saying, for you knew her well, and she specially loved your wife. I am only writing what comes to my mind to do what I can; but you see I have so few definite facts, and I knew her only when she was full-grown in character and her work established.