Then out spake Father Varius
No craven heart was his:
‘To pollmen and to wranglers
Death comes but once, I wis.
And how can man live better,
Or die with more renown,
Than fighting against Progress
For the rights of cap and gown?’
The anniversary has since been kept at Newnham as “Commemoration” day: and if one touch were needed to complete it it would be found in Miss Clough’s reminder to the students that they commemorate not only what women gained that day, but what the university gave that day. There was an amusing sequel to the vote: the official charged with the preparation of the university certificates consulted a confidential clerk as to the colour of the knot of ribbon which is attached to the university seal—“Don’t you think blue—the university colour?” he hazarded; but was met by the prompt and horrified rejoinder “blue stockings, sir, blue stockings!” So the colour is green.
Social life.
Except under special circumstances the age for admission at Newnham and Girton is 18. Students’ quarters at Newnham consist, in most cases, of a bed-sitting room; at Girton each student has a sitting room with a small bedroom leading from it. The necessary furniture is supplied, and can be supplemented according to taste by the student. All students must be within college boundaries by 7 o’clock (but with permission they can be out till 11) and are “marked in” two or three times a day, the chief occasion being the 7 o’clock “hall.” Girton and Newnham students, if no other lady is to be present, can only visit men’s rooms accompanied by some senior of the college. Visits of men to students’ rooms are not permitted, except in the case of fathers and brothers; but a student cannot ask her brother to her room to meet her college friends, for as Miss Clough observed “the brother of one is not the brother of all.” Careful supervision with large liberty and an atmosphere which encourages the students to make themselves the trustees of the rules, characterise both colleges; and women students, as Miss Davies has pointed out, carry on their university life without being subject to the proctorial control which is found necessary in the case of men.
In the early days it required some independence of character to encounter the gibes and the wonder which women’s life at the university aroused outside it. People who did not know what a “divided skirt” was, undertook to affirm that all Girtonians wore them: at Newnham some unconventionality in dress was amply concealed by the general dowdiness of the early Newnhamite. The dreaded eccentricities in conduct or clothes would not indeed have killed the movement; and the authorities did not allow this dread to paralyse the quality of mercy, so that there was in fact small justification for the witty suggestion of a Newnham student that “Mrs. Grundy rampant and two Newnham students couchant” would make appropriate armorial bearings for the college. Nevertheless, as a concession to human weakness, smoking was not, and still is not, tolerated.
Both colleges hold debates in the great hall and also inter-collegiate and inter-university debates. Here are some of the subjects discussed: “Is half a loaf better than no bread?” “That we spend too much” (lost). “That the best education offered to our grandmothers was more adequate than that offered by the High Schools of to-day” (lost). The most important society at Newnham, however, is the Political Debating Society, and the lively and absorbing interest in politics shown nowadays by the college is in striking contrast to the general indifference to politics at Girton. This year (1906) in an inter-university debate (Oxford and Newnham) the motion “That this house approves Chamberlain’s conception of empire” resulted in a ‘draw.’ Most of the students of both colleges are members of the Women’s University Southwark Settlement, to which they subscribe. There is a Sunday Society and two musical societies in addition to the original Choral Society at Newnham, and societies in connexion with each of the triposes take the place of the select “Jabberwock” and “Sunday Reading Society” of earlier days. The great indoor institution at both colleges is the students’ party at 10 p.m. known at Newnham as the “Cocoa.” Two to four is the chief recreation hour, and there are college, inter-collegiate, and inter-university hockey, fives, cricket, tennis, and croquet matches. One of the first conveniences provided at Newnham was its gymnasium, where in the early days of the college a senior moralist might be seen leaping over the back of a student who had just been “ploughed” in the divinity of the “Little-Go,” and a series of reverend seigniors would engage in a hopping match round the room led by the youngest “first year” who was an acknowledged expert in the art.
The public of a generation ago imagined that
