LIFE AT MYRA LODGE.
“To know her is a liberal education.”
“I have no liking for large boarding-schools. My ideal of
education is large, well-conducted day schools, with all the
life and discipline that numbers alone can give; not to speak of
the greater cheapness and efficiency of the teaching. Our young
women are narrowed sadly by the want of sympathy, large
experience, and right self-estimation which only mixing with
numbers gives. But no large dormitories nor dining-rooms. Let
the education be as broad and vivacious as may be, and to a
certain extent, public; at all events, public-spirited. But, if
boarders must attend, let them live in families, under proper
regulations, of course, and attend as day scholars. Large
boarding-schools give a sort of hardness, which I, for one,
greatly dislike. They destroy the home-feelings, but I need not
dwell on these points; my feelings are most in favour of day
schools and good homes.
“We have two boarding-houses. One, my own, is of very recent
establishment—the girls go to and from school with me or an
assistant-governess. Their education is just the same as that of
all the day pupils.
“It is right, however, to say that this plan of letting the
mistress receive boarders is not allowed at the Cheltenham
Ladies’ College, a large and successful institution, the only
(almost) efficient proprietary girls’ school in this country. I
can see possible evils, but as I have only just begun, am not
fully aware of them yet. I should not recommend, I think, the
mistress of a great day school being allowed to begin with a
boarding-house. Her strength and whole working time ought to go
to the school.”
So wrote Miss Buss in 1868. She had taken Myra Lodge because she could
not otherwise have carried out her great scheme. She afterwards came to
see more clearly still that the head of a great school ought to have her
time at home free from all claims. Had she been able to act on this from
the first, her own life might have been prolonged. But once having taken
up the life at Myra she could never bring herself to let the girls go.
Even when, at last, she handed the boarding-house over to Miss Edwards,
she moved to the house adjoining, and had a door left so that she could
have girls to see her or go to see them. She said: “I do not think I
could now be quite happy without girls round me.”
In accordance with her own theories, she tried to make Myra Lodge as
home-like as possible. And the welfare of her girls—physical, mental,
and spiritual—was her first care. To hygiene she had paid special
attention, and her arrangements for ventilation, bathing, and food, left
nothing to be desired. She always laid great stress on the need of
sufficient food, varied in every possible way; and every one within her
range must have heard her expatiate on the folly, or wickedness, for she
gave it the harder term, which induces so many young women to do fatal
injury to their health by insufficient and unsuitable food. Of the
laziness and indifference which makes so many of them content with odd
cups of tea, in place of regular and proper meals, she could not speak
too strongly. The Myra girls were fed well, and with sufficient luxuries
to make “home hampers” unnecessary.
On all sides we hear of the special care exercised in the matter of
proper food during examinations, or in any time of extra strain. If it
was known that the interval during an examination was too brief to allow
of a full meal, hot soup, or hot milk, with bread and butter, or scone,
would be ready at the right time.
Here is a word to the point from Miss Buss, to whom I had mentioned some
child’s complaint against a teacher—
“If there is anything wrong, I will see to it, but, meantime, I
cannot but think there is as much _real_ foundation for this
charge against Miss S. as there is in the one against me, which
has taken much of my time this week to trace out, viz. that a
girl now in school, was removed from my house, and placed under
medical treatment, because of the _insufficiency of food_.
“It is quite impossible to trust in children’s judgments until
all sides of the question are looked into. Their views are as
immature as their bodies.
“Another child speaks in the same way of another teacher, and I
am constantly having to bring in floods of light on a girl.”
Suitable clothing was also a matter of careful consideration. Miss Buss
would have liked a school-uniform, which she would have made graceful as
well as rational; but, except in the gymnasium, she never attained this
desire, and had to content herself with at school advising, and at Myra
compelling, the most needful reforms. She waged war against unsuitable
ornamentation, lace and jewellery in the morning being always attacked.
She would, if possible, have given each girl a separate room, well
supplied with the “place for everything,” in which everything would be
expected to be in its place. Failing this, she so divided the rooms by
curtains that each inmate secured one portion that was specially her
own.
At one time it was rather a fashion to talk of the “over-work” at Miss
Buss’ schools. Doubtless there were cases of girls too delicate for the
life of a public school, who ought to have been kept at home; and there
were also cases—very numerous—in which girls who were expected to do
school-work and at the same time meet every home claim, as well as enjoy
social distractions and dissipations, certainly did suffer. But at Myra
Lodge, where life was duly regulated, and the time for study fixed to
suit each girl, no one suffered who was at all fit to be away from her
mother’s care, whilst many were very markedly improved in health during
their stay there.
Having myself suffered, for life, from the ignorance of the laws of
health common to even the most intellectually advanced teachers of my
youth, I was interested in this question, and often talked it over with
Miss Buss. Looking back on my own experience, and contrasting it with
what I knew of the arrangements at Myra, I could never bring myself to
believe in the sufferings of girls enjoying the benefit of Miss Buss’
thorough knowledge of hygiene.
She fully endorsed the opinion expressed by Miss Beale, in an able paper
read before the Social Science Congress, in 1874, where she says—
“I remember the outcry raised when it was proposed to open the
local examinations to girls. The deed was done, and none of the
evils predicted have fallen on us. I frequently challenge our
visitors to find a delicate-looking girl among our students. I
do not say we have none, but there are so few that it is not
easy to find them. I kept, one year, a record of all the causes
of absence, and found that in the higher classes pupils were
absent from illness on an average about three days in a year, in
the lower from five to six, and in the lowest rather more.”
And from America comes the satisfactory report of “headaches diminishing
and hysteria disappearing under the strengthening influences on body and
mind of this higher education.”
There is no doubt that the pupils of the North London Collegiate Schools
had enough to do. But I know of at least two cases where the complaint
was quite the other way. Miss Buss says in one note—
“Fancy Mr. ——! He also wrote last year objecting to his
daughter’s home-work being limited. I know that most of the Myra
girls finish at seven o’clock, do no lessons before nine in the
morning, do _none at all_ on Friday evening, and always put
every bit of school-work by on Saturday at twelve. This leaves
many an hour free. But parents are the weakest of mortals.
Unmarried ‘_Arnies_’ have _will_, and _carry out_ what they know
to be right!”
In another case a pupil was withdrawn from Myra Lodge because she was
not allowed to work beyond the allotted time. Miss Buss writes in
reference to this—
“The child thinks she will be allowed, I suppose, to study
whatever hours she likes, if she goes elsewhere. _I_ will not
allow more than a certain amount. What’s not done then, must be
left undone. The consequence is, mental as well as bodily
activity, in time.”
Later, she again refers to the same subject: “Patty Watson has left me.
It is a good lesson of failure, and helps, let us hope, to repress that
‘bladder of elation’ of which you speak.” And, once again, apropos to
some other difficulty: “The enclosed note is very satisfactory. J—— D——
was not allowed to go her own way, like Patty, who, by the way, is a
clever girl, conscientious and industrious.”
It may be open to question, perhaps, whether Miss Buss might not have
relaxed her rules in favour of this very remarkable girl. But it is also
probable that the very perception of the dangers attending overstrain
may have made her resolute against it. Miss Ellen Martha Watson had gone
to Myra Lodge, mainly that she might pursue study in higher mathematics,
and consequently might have expected to count as more than an ordinary
schoolgirl. She was, however, of highly sensitive organization, and no
one who knows the care exercised over each girl individually can doubt
that Miss Buss was aware of all that concerned her, and judged
accordingly.
Miss Watson gained first-class honours in the Senior Cambridge Local
Examination while at Myra Lodge. Afterwards, at the University College
Intermediate, she took the highest prize for applied mathematics and
mechanics, as well as a £50 Scholarship. Professor Clifford said on this
occasion that the proficiency of Miss Watson would have been very rare
in a man, but he had been utterly unprepared to find it in a woman,
adding that, “a few more students like Miss Watson would raise
University College to a status far surpassing that of institutions
twenty times as rich and two hundred times longer in existence.”
A case so exceptional must stand alone; but still the question does
suggest itself, if, throughout her whole school-life, Miss Watson had
been subject to the restrictions judged wholesome by one so wise as Miss
Buss, might she not possibly have been spared to work out her splendid
destiny, instead of being so early laid to rest in her lonely South
African grave?
It is impossible to form any rules which will include the few brilliant
exceptions who are a law to themselves; such, for example, as Miss
Cobbe, one out of a thousand, in being endowed with a physique to match
her mental vigour, who gives an instance of the kind of work possible to
herself. She is contrasting the old and the new order of things, or
_impulse_ versus _system_.
“I can make no sort of pretensions to have acquired, even in my
best days, anything like the instruction which the young
students of Girton and Newnham and Lady Margaret Hall are so
fortunate as to possess; and much I envy their opportunities for
acquiring accurate scholarship. But I know not whether the
method they follow can, on the whole, convey as much of the pure
delight of learning as did my solitary early studies. When the
summer morning sun rose over the trees and shone into my
bedroom, finding me still over my books from the evening before,
and when I then sauntered out to take a sleep on one of the
garden-seats in the shrubbery, the sense of having learnt
something, or cleared up some hitherto doubted point, or added a
store of fresh ideas to my mental riches, was of purest
satisfaction.”
Without coming to any final decision on the best mode of dealing with
genius, to which study after this fashion may be natural, we may at
least safely conclude that even in the most elastic of school
boarding-houses, a girl so expansive could scarcely find herself happy,
or be a source of happiness to the anxious mistress.
But how happy even a very clever girl might be at Myra we may see from
some memories of a stay of six months, spent in preparation for Girton,
where the writer, Mrs. Lewis, distinguished herself—
“I remember, as if it was yesterday, my first meeting with Miss
Buss, now twenty-three years ago.... At the earliest possible
moment she had interviewed me privately, and I was deeply
impressed by her earnest manner, by the thoroughness with which
she went into my former education, and the evident intention of
doing her utmost for me. This I soon knew was characteristic of
her. We were, to her, individuals—each one the object of genuine
interest and real anxiety....
“She talked to me more as an adult than as a schoolgirl, and I
remember with gratitude that she invited me to walk with her to
church, or on any occasion when she happened to go out with us,
interesting me in some social, educational, or philanthropic
subject, talking with such fluency and such a fund of
illustration and of racy anecdote that I was sorry when our
destination was reached. Looking back, I realize what an
unusually generous thing it was for all these privileges to be
poured out on a raw schoolgirl, and, moreover, on a stranger.
That eager, ungrudging, self-spending for others was, to my
mind, the most noticeable feature of dear Miss Buss’ daily life.
“In about two months Miss Buss began actively arranging for me
to see as much of London as possible during my stay with her.
With all the varied work and cares of her busy days upon her,
she would constantly ask, ‘Had I seen this place of interest?
had I heard that famous preacher? had I ever been so-and-so?’
And every spare afternoon or evening was used to the best
advantage, either personally, or with any lady she could find
free to chaperone me. She often told me that a teacher ought to
have as wide and varied an experience as possible, and all the
general information she could get, and should never think that
book-learning alone would fit her for her post. Foreign travel,
social intercourse, general reading, all were insisted on as
indispensable. And she would give me bits of the history of her
own struggles....
“The happiness of all her pupils was to her an object of real
solicitude. I remember my delighted surprise on one of the first
Saturdays at her cheery invitation, ‘Now, girls, which of you
would like to come to see Maccabe, at St. George’s Hall, with me
this afternoon?’ I knew the week had been a very busy one, and I
wondered how Miss Buss could find the energy to be so gay, and
to laugh with the merriest of us at the jokes.
“Looking back, I realize that I cannot over-estimate the value
of such association with that noble, earnest, sympathetic
nature. And, certainly, I have never seen any one who so equally
combined earnestness of purpose, untiring industry, indomitable
perseverance, and shrewd common sense, with the perfection of
womanly sympathy.”
Of the intellectually stimulating effect of this association another
pupil speaks strongly—
“Although it is quite impossible for any of us to measure the
great influence for good that Miss Buss has exerted over the
whole of our lives, in one particular I have specially felt the
great help her training has been to me personally, viz. the
choice of books and taste for good literature.
“I can remember, quite early in my school-life, the cutting
satire with which Miss Buss would criticize some of the modern
trash in the shape of literature, so that one felt (and that
feeling I have never lost) one simply could not read such books.
On the other hand, she always recommended plenty of good
wholesome books to help us in the choice of our reading; while,
in pointing out passages, or in explaining allusions, she roused
interest, and cultivated the taste for all that is good and pure
in literature.
“She applied to books, as to other things, her favourite motto:
‘Aim high, and you will strike high!’
“She seemed, in all her teaching, to agree with the poet Lowell,
that ‘not failure, but low aim, is crime!’
“A favourite subject for debate was the _Ethics of Waste_,
showing that everything wantonly destroyed is a loss to the
community. The wickedness of waste of food seems to have excited
much attention, and set the girls, among themselves, to discuss
and make calculations concerning it which served—as they were
meant to do—to give safe and harmless topics for talk.
“Akin to this was the effort to make girls look into the future,
and not to trust to what might happen, but to prepare by present
action in acquiring habits of decision and industry. She thought
that every woman should be independent, and deprecated
dependence on brothers or other friends, so long as effort was
possible on their own part.”
Another “Myra girl” seizes on a point very characteristic, when she
says—
“To schoolgirl and friend alike, Miss Buss was entirely natural.
She was too great to think of, or to need, exterior aids to
respect. Forgetful of herself, she was ever ready to share her
thoughts or memories with all who could be interested or helped
by them.
“In her conversation she avoided all personal gossip. Never did
an unkind or hasty word about a fellow-being cross her lips, and
often in the school addresses, she told us that by chatter the
ninth commandment was easily broken, and that topics about
acquaintances begun in innocence, ended only in harm and hurt to
others.”
There is a story of her that, one day, after a visitor had gone, Miss
Buss seemed very uncomfortable, and finally said, “I feel as if I had
been stung all over; that talk has left so many stings behind it!” It
was her rule, carefully kept, never to repeat unpleasant things; but she
never forgot to mention any kind word said about others.
Miss Fawcett speaks of Miss Buss’ sympathy with young life and its
needs, and she adds—
“The girls were a great happiness to Miss Buss. If one or other
did give trouble through temper—and this did worry her—we would
sometimes comfort each other by reflecting how many of them did
nothing of the kind, but went on tranquilly and happily. ‘Yes,’
she would say, ‘it is the old story; the ninety and nine are apt
to be forgotten in the struggle with the one!’ And she would
cheer up.”
She was very indulgent to her girls at the half-term holidays. Besides
sending them for pleasant excursions, she liked them to be able to go
into the kitchen to make toffee, and to cook some little dainty
(Northcountry cakes or specialities), or anything else they might like.
The girls’ birthdays were always marked by some special treat. On one
occasion we hear that the younger children were, for once, to be allowed
to make “just as much noise as they liked.” The results were so
“tremendous” that a friendly policeman looked in to see if his services
were required, greatly relieved to find that the shrieks which had
attracted him were only shrieks of laughter.
But, whilst delighting in real fun, the line was drawn, hard and fast,
at slang, roughness, and, above all, at practical jokes. No girl who had
once had a talk with her on this last topic was likely to make a second
attempt within reach of Miss Buss. The doings of certain “smart” sets
found small tolerance in her eyes. Nor did the “Dodo” and “Yellow Aster”
literature fare better, though for most of it she would have probably
given the prescription that worked so well in one particular case of
morbid excitement—“closed doors and open windows,” or silence and fresh
air.
Miss Buss had remarked, as a fact of her experience, that if girls of
great natural vanity could not take the lead in any other way, they
developed something sensational in health. Hearing of a case of this
sort in one of the boarding-houses, she requested to be sent for if
another fainting fit should come on. This was done. On arriving, she
found the girls’ room full of anxious bystanders, who were at once
dismissed, only excepting the head of the house, who was asked to close
the door and open all the windows.
Miss Buss then demanded a large jug of “the very coldest water that
could be procured,” adding, in distinct tones, “There is no sort of
danger in this kind of attack, and the most certain cure is a sudden
dash of very cold water in the face.”
In telling me this story, she added, with one of her most genial smiles—
“I saw that the child had her best frock on, and I wanted to give her
time.”
Before the water came, the patient was able to gasp out, “Ah, I feel
better now, thank you!”
“That is right, my child. I am glad you feel better. And now remember,
in future, that you need never alarm either yourself or any one else. If
you feel a little faintness coming on, just retire to your own room,
without saying anything about it. Shut your door, open all the windows,
and lie down quietly. You will soon find yourself well again.”
There was no recurrence of the attack.
With weakness of will Miss Buss could by nature have little sympathy.
But she was stern only when she knew that a will might be roused to
greater effort, which, if let alone, could only grow more and more
feeble. With merely morbid and self-centred natures she had still less
affinity, and for these the prescription, “Do your next duty first!”
would be very strongly enforced.
Coldness or extreme reserve of manner was always a trial to Miss Buss,
as to all persons of a naturally demonstrative temperament. It was true
that she herself sometimes exercised a repressive influence, but this
was only when she was very much run down or worried. Usually, she drew
people out by her frank kindness. One of her very favourite stories for
her girls was Mrs. Gatty’s charming kitten story, “Purr when you are
pleased!” She liked every one to show feelings of pleasure or kindness,
and in this she set them a bright example.
Miss Fawcett recalls, among many things bearing on the same point, a
remark made to her by Miss Buss, as they passed two new girls—both of
whom are since known to fame—“It is always a refreshment of spirit to me
to look at those two happy sisters!” Natures of this kind were a real
help in her times of depression or discouragement, though, doubtless,
none of the girls ever dreamt that one so strong could need help. Other
teachers will understand from experience this joy of whole-hearted and
sympathetic obedience from their pupils. And it is easy to measure what
this must have been to Miss Buss in those later days, when she was no
longer the energetic young teacher, sweeping every one along with her in
a rapture of devotion, but, instead, had to carry, in addition to her
own inevitable burdens, all the cares of her wide public work.
It may be a direct result of public-school life, assimilating the modern
girl to her schoolboy brother, but certainly it is to be observed that
the High-school girl rarely seems to have that power of expressing her
feelings which made her mother or grandmother so much easier in all
social relations. It is more than probable that, in thus growing like
the typical “schoolboy,” she may in reality feel more, and not less,
from this very habit of repression. But the fact remains that she is
more difficult of approach than the girl of other days.
With special cases quite individual in their nature, Miss Buss was
rarely known to fail. As one of her staff observes—
“the way in which she managed difficult and obstinate pupils was
marvellous. She would spend hours with them, and never thought
the time wasted if at last she made the slightest impression.
Often, when this did not appear on the surface, it was shown
weeks, months, or even years after, by some little note or
message.”
In thanking a young friend for some proof of affection there is a
pathetic little appeal—
“You _young_ people can form no idea—till your time comes—of how
much pain a little indifference can inflict, especially when
both the old and the young have warm hearts. My life needs close
love from some one—I have given a large amount of mine to some
one—and when he not only responds, but initiates loving remarks
or caresses, he fills the old person’s heart with warmth,
brightness, and love.”
On some few occasions, when more than usually overdone, I have heard
Miss Buss admit with a weary sigh that she found the girls of the last
decade of her work so much less easy to influence than those of the
first; since, even when they were inwardly touched, they seemed unable
to show it after the old fashion.
“_Autres temps, autres mœurs._” But yet, making all due allowance, if
these “difficult” girls could have seen this friend after one of the
encounters so terrible to her, and have realized how spent and
heart-sick she was, they must have taken less pride in their defiance or
hardness. She cared for them so deeply that it was real anguish of soul
to her to think of the future sorrows inevitable for tempers
undisciplined and wills unsubdued.
With this question of the influence on manners of the public school
comes what does seem a real objection to the new development—an
objection most strongly felt by those who look farthest back. With her
invariable point and terseness, Miss Cobbe thus puts this matter in a
nutshell—
“William of Wykeham’s motto: ‘Manners makyth Manne,’ was
understood to hold good emphatically concerning the making of
Woman. The abrupt-speaking, courtesy-neglecting, slouching,
slangy young damsel, who may now perhaps carry off the glories
of a University degree, would then have seemed still needing to
be taught the very rudiments of feminine knowledge. When I
recall the type of perfect womanly gentleness and high breeding
which then and there was formed, it seems to me as if, in
comparison, modern manners are all rough and brusque. We have
graceful women in abundance still, but the peculiar,
old-fashioned suavity, the tact which made every one in a
company happy and at ease—most of all, the humblest individual
present—and which at the same time, effectually prevented the
most audacious from transgressing _les bienséances_ by a hair;
of that suavity and tact we seem to have lost the tradition.”
But Miss Buss had always faith enough in the future to regard the modern
roughness as merely a transitional stage, and as the outcome, in the
first place, of the higher standard of morals which places _fact_ before
_seeming_. The perfect outward grace of the courtly days did not always
imply corresponding grace within. When these first days of reaction
shall pass, and a really wide and high culture shall have become
general, we may expect the development of a new gracefulness which shall
be the genuine outcome of a truly gracious spirit.
“For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature, and of noble mind.”
In the very early days at Myra, the rules were few and simple, and the
girls were trusted to do the right for love of it. Miss Buss believed in
the force of a strong public opinion which should put all wrong-doing in
its true light as hurtful to the community; and she considered it the
chief advantage of a large public school that a strong feeling for the
right should prevail, and, by its very force, put down all that was base
or ignoble.
It was a grief to her to make new rules, and I can recall her sorrow, on
several occasions, when it became necessary to add to those already
existing—in every case as the result of some act on the part of a
selfish minority, who thus imposed additional burdens on the obedient
majority.
Miss Fawcett, who had long experience at Myra, and Miss Edwards, who
followed her there, speak very strongly about the thoughtful care which
in all cases aimed at preventing possible dangers. Girls whose influence
might be hurtful to each other were placed in rooms remote; and the
sitting-rooms were made attractive, and thus kept the pupils to some
extent under constant supervision.
In Miss Buss’ letters during the holidays there are many proofs of this
thoughtfulness. She writes to Miss Fawcett—
“Of these two I know nothing—morally, I mean. But A. ought to be
kept if possible from B., and also from C. and D.; the former
cannot manage her, and the latter gives in, perhaps, to her.
Would it do for her to take F.’s bed, in G.’s room? It requires
consideration.”
This consideration reached all round. Another long letter goes into
arrangements for Miss Fawcett’s own relief from some of the care, each
detail being worked out with the utmost exactness.
Or again—
“Can you invite X. to visit you on the half-term holiday, or, if
possible, from Friday or Saturday before? I fear she may be
asked to two places where I do not wish her to go just now. She
is not easy to manage, and her companions are of great
importance; and yet it is difficult for me to decline
invitations when the reason cannot be explained.
“If you do not much mind, I will not send the three girls on
Sunday until six o’clock, when they will be in time for service,
unless it is raining.
“But _I_ give up an hour or rather more to the girls on Sunday
afternoons, and have been obliged, since that difficulty last
year, to refuse to let them out on Sundays, except at the
half-term. If by any chance a girl goes out in the morning, I
expect her back to tea. They can go out on Saturday afternoons
occasionally.”
Here is a note after the great explosion in Regent’s Park, on October
2nd, 1874—
“I hope nothing worse than broken glass has happened at your
house in consequence of the terrible shock this morning.
Thirteen of my windows are shattered, but I am too thankful for
the preservation of the young inmates of my house to mind
anything.
“My first thought was that the stack of chimneys had blown down,
and, in falling, had crushed the roof in on the beds of Mary and
Ethel P—— and Edith A——. The noise seemed to come from that
quarter. In an instant I was upstairs, to ascertain if they were
safe.
“I find myself even now shaking from the shock to the nervous
system. My girls behaved admirably. They were all quiet.”
From the early days to the latest Miss Buss gave short addresses weekly
on some moral text, choosing frequently some recent story of great deed
or high thought, and making it interesting as she brought it to bear on
the daily life of the girls. As one of the staff remarks—
“The high moral tone of the school was materially helped by
these weekly addresses. Four forms met her in the Lecture Hall,
and teachers and pupils listened to her wise counsel. One of her
favourite texts was the life of Dorothy Wordsworth, as she
earnestly pleaded with the girls, above all things, to aim at
being true women, and not to let their school-work in any way
interfere with their home duties, never forgetting that they
must bring either sunshine or cloud into the home-life.”
Here is a little sketch of the Sunday talks at Myra—
“I love to picture that drawing-room, Miss Buss to the left of
the fire, her lamp on the table at her right, and the girls
grouped around her at the fire, often some at her feet.... I
never heard any one read as she did, and especially on those
Sundays! Every word told. And then she would pause, and send
some truth home by an illustration from her own experience....
After the holidays, she was generally full of some new thought:
Mrs. Norton’s ‘Lady of La Garaye’ was brought after a happy
holiday at Dinan.... She spent hours in the preparation of the
Myra and school addresses, a testimony to the stress she laid on
their importance.”
There are some pretty little glimpses of the inner life at Myra, given
by a pupil who spent there a somewhat prolonged school-life, in which
she came into very close relation to the beloved teacher—
“My earliest recollection of Miss Buss was when I went in for
the entrance exam.; in a state of great trepidation, I
accompanied her along the corridor to take off my things, and I
think she saw my poor fingers shaking, for she suddenly took me
in her warm embrace, and said, ‘Do your best, my dear child, and
you must leave the rest,’ and then, looking me in the face, with
another kiss, she said, ‘I _think_ we are going to be friends.’
And the radiant smile that accompanied the kiss won my heart and
banished my fears.
“I had been at Myra Lodge only a few weeks when, one of the
girls having acted contrary to regulations, a warm discussion on
her conduct took place in the playroom downstairs, some
defending and some disapproving of her conduct. We were quite
unaware that in the heat of discussion our voices were loud
enough to be heard upstairs; it was a point on which I felt
strongly, and I expressed myself somewhat emphatically for a
new-comer. The next day Miss Buss sent for me, said she knew of
the incident, and ‘you said so-and-so, my child; I am delighted
to think you feel in that way, you were on the right side, and
remember, dear, I shall always _expect_ to find you on the right
side.’ How often that belief in my being ‘on the right side’
helped me to make the struggle for the right only _I_ can tell!”
The same writer gives a glimpse of the brightest side of the relation
between the head and her Myra girls—
“Miss Buss would often come round and see we were quite
comfortable in our beds, and give us a maternal ‘tuck-up.’ One
morning at breakfast she came behind my chair, and, turning my
chin up with her hand to look in my face, said with laughing
voice and eye—
“‘Well, did I cheat you last night?’
“A vision of a figure in red dressing-gown tucking me up and
kissing me sprang into my mind, and I said—
“‘Oh, I remember; I thought it was mother.’
“And, whispering to me, she said, as she kissed me, ‘I thought
so, dear; you gave me such a hug, you sent me so happy to bed!’”
And this, again, from another old pupil, is equally attractive—
“Never shall I forget her kindness when confined to my room at
Myra by illness. It was the bright spot in my day when Miss Buss
appeared in the evening to tuck me up in bed, and wish me good
night. More than once she was on her way to some dinner or
meeting, and wore a blue _moiré_, which I thought singularly
becoming. Her smile, peculiarly sweet, piquant, and gracious,
lighted up my long, dull hours, and lingers with me still.
“There was something so large and unfluctuating about her that
one felt one could trust her with and through everything.”
An apparently harmless bit of nonsense brought about another episode
which deeply impressed the girl who tells it—
“Miss Buss was in her little room. In her kindest way she held
out her hand to me and said—
“‘Dear child, I want to talk to you; did you write that?’
producing the book.
“‘Oh yes,’ I laughed, ‘just to tease Louie!’
“I shall never forget the way in which she drew me to her, put
my head on her shoulder, and then talked to me. She pointed out
that the offence in itself was not a serious one, but that the
jesting with a subject so serious as Love was one that no girl
should indulge in; and then followed the most beautiful little
picture of what true earthly love might be, that makes me glow
to think of now, and she urged me never to trifle with the
subject in any form, reserving all my ‘best’ for the one who was
to give me ‘what is God’s best gift on earth, dear, the love of
a good man, such as the love your father and mother have, and
such as I hope He may give you.’ How glad I am to think she
_knew_ I have received that gift!”
It must indeed have been a joy to this happy young wife to be able often
to brighten the later days of the solitary worker, whom she mourns now
with tender and grateful remembrance in words that find far echoes—
“You know my deep affection, I may truly say veneration, for the
dear one, and I feel as if one of my very nearest had gone. I
look on it as one of the greatest privileges of my life to have
lived in such close contact with her for so many years. Dear,
dear Miss Buss, what an inspiration she has been, and what a
responsibility rests with us to carry out what she has always
taught us as the ideal of life! Her influence in the world is
untold; and I am sure many are the lives she has influenced in
critical times when the thought of what _she_ would do, or would
wish, has turned the scale in the right direction.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
THE GYMNASIUM, NORTH LONDON COLLEGIATE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS.
]