Newnham has formed a collegiate character which is partly due to elements in its original constitution, partly to its first principal, and partly to its physical vicinity to the university. To take the last first. The college has always benefited by what one of the professors once described to the present writer as “the life of the university passing through it.” It was not only this proximity, but the fact that Newnham was the product of the interest taken by university men in the advanced education of women—(Girton of a just and fully justified claim to university education made by women for women)—which made the acquirement of this character easier: and Newnham has in a marked degree the character of the university which harbours it—its cult of solid learning, its width and range, the absence of all pretentiousness, of that which every man and woman educated at Cambridge abhors as “priggishness.” The delightful informality of Newnham and the liking for simple appearances is already outlined in the first Principal’s views about the scheme and the new building; “nothing elaborate or costly” is wanted: “The simple Cambridge machinery will be found all the better and all the more lasting because it suggested itself so very naturally, and almost, so to speak, created itself. It is all the better for a college, as for other institutions, when it is not made, but grows.”[478] And Newnham was not made but has grown, grown “very naturally” out of the “simple machinery” first designed for it; has “created itself” because these simple elements suggested the way and the means of growth. There is no chapel at Newnham, all sorts and conditions of men have always been found there, and have worshipped God their own way—“not on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem.” Old students sit at its council board, and come up to read in the Long Vacation. Miss Clough governed without rules, in conditions which were not then normal—which were thought indeed to be so abnormal that no company of women could venture to accept them.
If the enthusiasm expended over the two colleges by those who did most for them—the anxiety when things seemed to go wrong, the rejoicing when they went right—be remembered best by those who experienced it, it has had its enduring result in the
movement itself. For nothing great is born without enthusiasm, and this was one of the greatest movements of the century. The lecturers—those “trained and practised teachers” who as an original prospectus declared “were willing to extend the sphere of their instruction“—took no fees, or returned them for several years as a donation to Newnham. Miss Clough not only took no stipend as Principal but helped the college with money; Dr. and Mrs. Sidgwick, in addition to financial help of every kind, gave up their home in Chesterton and lived in three rooms at the “North Hall” of which Mrs. Sidgwick became vice-principal; and here Miss Helen Gladstone, Gladstone’s unmarried daughter, acted as her secretary. Miss M. G. Kennedy has been honorary secretary of the college since 1875, Mrs. Bonham-Carter its honorary treasurer and Mr. Hudson its honorary auditor. It may fairly be said of Newnham also, that it is partly the outcome of the enthusiastic loyalty of its first students, who have since taken so large a share in its welfare.[479]
The “Graces” of 1881.
In the Lent term of 1881 there happened the greatest event in the history of the women’s university movement. Three “Graces” were proposed to the Senate (a) should women be entitled to examination in the triposes (b) to a certificate of the place won (c) to the insertion of their names, after that of the men, in all tripos lists, with a specification of the corresponding place attained by them in the men’s list? On the eve of the day fixed for the vote—February 24th—the vicar of Little S. Mary’s church and a Mr. Potts announced that they would non-placet the ‘graces,’ and as the day dawned some believed that their recruits would swamp the vote. On the same evening Mr. John Hollond, late M.P. for Brighton, was differently engaged in the House of Commons getting members to promise to share in a special train which was to take them to the university by two o’clock to record their votes, and get them back to their places by four when there was to be an important division in the House.[480] The students of Girton and Newnham crowded the roof of the latter college to watch for the pre-arranged signal—a handkerchief tied to the whip of a student who rode along the “Backs” from the Senate House carrying the news. The vote in favour of the Graces had been 398 to 32, and when it was declared the venerable Dr. Kennedy, the distinguished headmaster of Shrewsbury school and at that time Regius Professor of Greek,[481] waved his cap under the eyes of the vice-chancellor like any schoolboy. The loyal friends now came hurrying up to Newnham, one by one, Henry Sidgwick, Miss Emily Davies, Professor Cayley (first president of the College Council) Mr. Archer-Hind, Mr. (now Dr.) J. N. Keynes, and received an ovation from those whose battles they had fought to such a successful issue: and if one of the seniors of the university became a boy in his delight, another Johnian[482] did not fail to cover himself with glory by his verses in imitation of Macaulay’s Lay of Horatius, in which “Father Varius” and his friends hold the bridge against progress: