The first sign of this awakening was publicly seen in 1844, when Dr. Pusey engaged several leading laymen, among whom was Mr. Gladstone, to help him in the foundation of an Anglican Sisterhood. Two or three Orders date from before the opening of Queen’s College in 1848; those at Clewer and Wantage followed soon after. The devotion of Florence Nightingale and her little band in 1854 led many to follow her example, and the reform of nursing steadily if slowly followed. In 1866, before the reports of the Schools’ Inquiry were published, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell took an M.D. degree in Switzerland, and Miss Garrett began to study for one in London. The desire for better teaching and training was widespread. The establishment of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was a part of a larger movement which was affecting the whole country. Sixteen years had passed since the opening of Queen’s College had unsealed the fountain of knowledge for women. Immediately after, in 1849, a college had been established on undenominational lines. This was Bedford College, which found a liberal donor in Mr. Reid, and among its first teachers counted Francis Newman, De Morgan, and Dr. Carpenter. These led the way. Then in 1850 the great school which will for ever be associated with the name of Frances Mary Buss was opened in Camden Road, its enterprising head-mistress having there removed the private school she had carried on successfully for some years, to develop it on the lines of a public school, under the enlightened supervision of Mr. Laing. Cheltenham followed four years later, and these two, for many years the only public schools for girls in the country, may be considered the direct offspring of Queen’s College.
The general condition of girls’ education remained unimproved some years longer. Yet amid the thousands of private schools where worthless or poor teaching prevailed, there were a few which had come into the hands of capable women who had been inspired by the noble ideals of those who led the religious and intellectual thought of the day. The name of Elizabeth Sewell is representative of these; but for the most part they lived and died unknown, because their work was of less public moment than that of the great leaders. Yet, in an account of women’s education it seems ungracious to name only the well known, however great, and to pass unnoticed the wise virgins, less prominent but not less faithful, whose lamps shone and were replenished through the night. In her death, as in her work on earth, Dorothea Beale was not alone. Miss Sewell, aged ninety, passed but a few weeks before her, and very shortly after two other unknown fellow-workers, who had not laboured in vain. The Times of January 1907 told of Miss Piper, the founder and head of Laleham. Of Miss Piper it could be said, that at a time when the instruction given to girls was of a formal character, ‘she set herself to make her pupils think, to stimulate interest, to enforce thoroughness.’ These were the very points on which the Schools’ Commission found girls’ education defective. A fortnight later died Emily Milner, who was for fifty years head of St. Mary’s School at Brighton, to which she devoted all her small income. She taught with marvellous energy and freshness, inspiring her pupils themselves to be zealous and persevering, and keeping them in touch with all that was best in the rapid advance and change of modern education. But such head-mistresses were rare. The Commissioners seldom found either thoroughness or freshness in the schools they inspected.
The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted in 1864, a year in which John Ruskin, in a lecture at Manchester, made a passionate appeal to rich women to claim their right to serve—and reign. His cry did not reach a larger public until, eight years later, the lecture was published under the title ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ in Sesame and Lilies. Like the simultaneous discovery of some great star, by watchers strange to one another and half a continent apart, the movement for enlarging the scope of women’s work was furthered by men of divers ways and methods, heralded by visionaries like Tennyson and Ruskin, marshalled into deliberate order by high-hearted officials like the Secretary of the Governesses’ Benevolent Society and the School Inspector Joshua Fitch. Possibly no Assistant Commissioner, as he drew up his report, recalled the ringing words of Ruskin. But though the medium varies to the stretch of difference between the inspiration of a great poem and the deliberate statements of a blue-book, we recognise the same force behind both, and see both alike to be channels for one great stream of tendency. The conclusions drawn from the report, the resulting effects seen in new schools and organised public examinations, miss nothing of their special value if regarded in connection with such words as these:—
‘Let a girl’s education be as serious as a boy’s. You bring up your girls as if they were meant for side-board ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers ... teach them, also, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being.... There is hardly a girl’s school in this Christian Kingdom where the children’s courage and sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a door.... And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but noble teachers.’[40]
The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted to examine into the existing state of education above the elementary grade, and to report on measures needed for its improvement, having special regard to all endowments applicable, or which could rightly be made applicable, thereto. By the instance of Miss Emily Davies, girls’ schools were included in the inquiry. Among the Commissioners was Lord Lyttelton, who was regarded by those who wished to improve women’s education as a friend to girls. He had manfully asserted their right to a share of the endowments, and of women to a share in the management of girls’ schools. Sir Stafford Northcote, Dr. Temple, and Mr. Forster were also members of the Commission. Among the Assistant Commissioners, whose business it was to visit and report upon schools, were such well-known names as those of T. H. Green, J. G. Fitch, and J. Bryce.
No schools outside the eight selected districts were visited, but the Principals of some beyond their limit were requested to give evidence before the Commissioners in London. In the year 1868-9 reports and evidence were gradually issued in a series of twenty large blue-books. Of these volumes about nineteen-twentieths related to the education of boys and general questions, and about one-twentieth to the education of girls alone.
Miss Beale hailed the Commission as a means of bringing the thousand inefficiencies of girls’ education to the light. She took advantage of it in an address she gave in 1865 at Bristol, at a meeting of that now extinct body, the Social Science Congress, when she pleaded that, for boys and girls alike, education should be planned with the view of developing character. Her argument was none the less weighty because so carefully guarded:—
‘Let me say at once that I desire to institute no comparison between the mental abilities of boys and girls, but simply to say what seems to be the right means of training girls, so that they may best perform that subordinate part in the world to which, I believe, they have been called.
‘First, then, I think that the education of girls has too often been made showy, rather than real and useful; that accomplishments have been made the main thing, because these would, it was thought, enable a girl to shine and attract, while those branches of study especially calculated to form the judgment, to cultivate the understanding, and to discipline the character (which would fit her to perform the duties of life) have been neglected; and thus, while temporary pleasure and profit have been sought, the great moral ends of education have been too often lost sight of.
‘To the poorer classes the toil and struggle of their daily life do, to some extent, afford an education which gives earnestness, and strength, and reality; and if we would not have the daughters of the higher classes idle and frivolous, they too must be taught to appreciate the value of work. We must endeavour to give them, while young, such habits, studies, and occupations as will brace the mind, improve the taste, and develop the moral character. They must learn, not for the sake of display, but from motives of duty. They must not choose the easy and agreeable, and neglect what is dull and uninviting. They must not expect to speak languages without mastering the rudiments; nor require to be finished in a year or two, but impatiently refuse to labour at a foundation.’