PRACTICAL WORK.
“No one who has been brought into contact with Miss Buss, no one
who has even seen her portrait, can have failed to be struck by
her transparent integrity, her absolute sincerity, her
single-mindedness of purpose. However much one might differ from
her on a question of policy, one felt certain that the judgment
was never warped by personal bias, that it was never prompted by
ambition or jealousy, or any vulgar motive.... As an organizer
she was unrivalled.”—_Journal of Education_, January, 1895.
The summary of Miss Buss’ practical work, for which I am so deeply
indebted to Mrs. Bryant, is best given in her own words, with merely an
interpolation illustrating that law of order on which these schools are
so firmly based.
* * * * *
Mrs. Bryant begins with an important reminder—
“Teachers are not inapt to forget that the most important factor in
education is the personality of the learner. The next most important is
the personality of the teacher. So far as others make our education for
us, the mind of the educator is more important by far than his method.
And this is the more true the greater the teacher.
“Of Frances Mary Buss this was specially true, so much was intuition and
sympathy in the concrete inwoven with her thoughts on the educational
ideal. The ideal of her action was an emanation of her nature as a
whole, not a pure product of thought. She could have told many things
about it, but she could not tell it all. Her vision was wide, but her
wisdom was wider. Hence there never was any danger that her mind would
harden into a net of secondary principles in the solution of any
individual problem. Practical questions were always unique, each one in
itself, to her; and, rapid as she was in action, she could give time to
deliberation and careful thought.
“To understand, therefore, the ideal of education under which so much
good work has been done, we need to understand, not a theory true once
for all, but the type of mind that is creative of right ideas as
occasion requires. Nor is a subtle delineation of character needed here.
The leading features are well marked, and a brief sketch may give the
clearest conception.
“Breadth and elasticity of imagination, indomitable energy of will,
boundless faith, unwearied sympathy—these are the great facts of
character which lie behind her work and mark its ideals. They are all
very obvious facts, but the first named, in the nature of the case,
though the rarest and most remarkable, is the easiest to miss in its
full significance. One clear mark of it is the memory she has left with
each of her friends, of being interested specially in that phase of
thought and work which she shared with them. The effect of it on her
educational work was that extraordinary catholicity of view which
distinguished her, and through her has influenced in many ways the
theory of the girls’ school, and the tone of the educational question in
the days which follow her.
“One phase of this catholic way of looking at things was her insistence,
always very emphatic, on the idea that school and the teacher have to do
in some way or other with the whole of life. She would not allow it to
be supposed that any condition of the well-being and good growth of her
pupils was no concern of hers. I do not mean that she at all denied the
function of the home in education. On the contrary, she attached the
greatest weight to it, but she held that whether the home did its duty
or not it was the business of the school to aim at supplying conditions
essential for the development of the pupil on all sides—to hold itself
responsible for failure even when fathers and mothers had neglected
their part. When parents were wrong-headed, or negligent, or mistaken,
then it seemed natural to her to set about educating them. Many mothers
learned priceless lessons of wisdom from her in the pleasant audiences
of her “Blue room” at school; and few, I think, were ungrateful for
them. She was full of ready resource in cases of difficulty, and she
ever held that the moral was much more essentially her business than the
intellectual salvation. When there was trouble with a girl, she gave
herself to its cure with the most absolute self-devotion, and one great
remedy was to send for the mother, to take counsel with her, and to give
her counsel. In all matters of behaviour, such as foolish talk and
unladylike—or shall I not rather say unwomanly—conduct she was strict
and vigilant. Such things never escaped her, and her manner of dealing
with them individually has made an epoch in the life of many a girl, the
transition from an irreverent to a reverent state of feeling for social
relationships.
“We are of course all familiar with the view that education is
threefold, that it concerns itself with moral, intellectual, and
physical welfare. But there was a strength and elasticity in Miss Buss’
feeling about school education as all-embracing that marked it as more
than the consequence of a view. Each girl was a clearly imagined whole
to her, with whose deficiencies and needs she had the mother’s no less
than the teacher’s sympathy. She was wonderfully patient, and
sympathetic, too, with foolish mothers, of whom there are some. She had
a kind word and thought for ‘fads,’ strenuously as she resisted them.
Forty years—thirty years—ago, the ‘fads’ that had to be resisted were
many indeed.
“So she taught us, her teachers, the duty of infinite pains, infinite
hope in the training of character. She never gave a girl up as hopeless.
If one way failed, then another must be found. She had great belief—a
belief well justified by facts—in the salvation of character by way of
the rousing of intellectual interests. It was curious to note how a
naughty girl improved if she grew to like her lessons. Naughtiness is
often unsteadiness of will, and intellectual discipline is a steadying
influence. Irrationality, moreover, is the cause of much moral evil, and
thoughtful study makes for rationality. It may be—I am much disposed to
think it is—that intellectual training effects greater moral improvement
in women than it does in men, because a woman’s faults of character, on
an average, turn more on irrationality and lack of nerve control, while
the man’s faults centre in his profounder self-absorption and slower
sympathies.
“Character as the prime aim of education soon became the key-note of the
North London practice. It fell in with this that great attention should
be paid to punctuality, accuracy, order, method, and the cultivation of
the clerkly business abilities generally. Nor should we forget that
simple quality of respect for property, so despised of boys, on which
the head-mistress laid much stress as essential for girls, and, indeed,
a part of honesty. In very early days, girls spilt ink on their dresses,
so ink ceased to be part of the regular school furniture, and is only
given out when required, e.g. for examinations, by the mistress in
charge of the form. It is part of the tradition of the place—a tradition
that will now be a tender memory—that the giving out of the ink is a
serious responsible act, the weight of which should never be thrown on a
monitor or even a prefect. The spilling of the ink is an evil so great
that its risk should be laid only on the shoulders of authority. But,
seriously, this is symbolic of the leading idea that the duty of taking
proper care of the furniture should be taught at school as well as at
home.
“Nobody but a school-mistress—except, indeed, a schoolmaster—knows to
what depths of disorder the youthful mind may descend in writing out its
lessons. I remember how it astonished me when, even at the North London
Collegiate School, the original sin of literary untidiness caused itself
to be seen. Well, from the beginning, serious war was made upon
irregularities and disorder of this kind, a whole system of school
routine growing up in consequence, much of which has become general in
girls’ schools.”
* * * * *
“Order, Heaven’s first law,” was certainly the first law of school-life.
The place was duly provided, and everything had to be in its place, an
arrangement greatly helped by the Swedish desks—one for each girl, of
suitable size—which Miss Buss was the first to introduce into England.
Wherever Miss Buss’ influence reached, order reigned. Everything bore
witness to her power of organization, and everything throughout the
place, down to the work of the lowest servant, was arranged by the head
who said of herself, “I spend my life in picking up pins!”
The highest illustration of this quality comes in the story of Lord
Granville’s admiration of the perfect arrangements on the Prize Day when
he was in the chair. He could not forget it, and spoke of it to Dr.
Carpenter, in reference to the giving of Degrees at Burlington House.
Dr. Carpenter wrote to Miss Buss to ask her secret, and in reply she
went herself to Burlington House and discussed with him all the
arrangements, which consequently went off in perfect order.
No girl in either school, who had been long enough to enter into the
spirit of the place, will ever during the longest life be able to look
with indifference on an ink-spot, or to suppress a feeling of lofty
superiority, if she ever has occasion to pass through a boys’ school,
and cast a glance at desks or floors there. And few will be able to read
without a sympathetic smile or sigh a little narrative of one of their
number showing what came of inadvertence on this point—
“One of the direst days in the whole of my school experience was
the day I spilt the ink.
“The accident happened on a Friday, and, since the event, Black
Friday has altered its position on the calendar, as far as I am
concerned.
“The terrible meaning the words ‘spilt ink’ convey to the mind
can only be understood by those who know how dearly Miss Buss
cherished the bright appearance of our beautiful school, and how
she strove to raise a similar feeling in us by occasionally
comparing its appearance with that of other public schools
(especially boys’), and by having every spot and stain forcibly
eradicated as soon as incurred.
“This accident happened one Friday morning just before prayers,
and was not confined to a single spot, but included the contents
of a large well-inkstand provokingly full.
“Hurrying past the form-table on hearing the hall bell, a long
protruding pen caught in a fold of my dress, the whole apparatus
swung steadily round and fell on the floor with a hideous
splash. There was only time to pick up the stand and pen, the
ink, alas! was foolishly left to soak steadily into the
stainless floor.
“That morning our bright little service seemed interminably
long, and several notices delayed the filing off of the classes
as speedily as usual.
“I was the first to re-enter our room, in which Fraülein stood
alone gazing at the catastrophe.
“I told her I was the culprit, and mumbled out something about
‘telling Miss Buss.’
“Her smile and quiet remark, ‘She vill not vant much telling,’
were hardly reassuring.
“Fraülein was quite right; Miss Buss did not want any telling,
the evidence in black and white was quite sufficient. She never
scolded me for the accident, but was vexed at my not having
informed the housekeeper immediately, instead of allowing the
ink to soak comfortably in for twenty minutes.
“After a little chat about ‘Presence of Mind,’ I was told to
repair the mischief, and attempt to get the stain out.
“There was no German for me that morning. The time was occupied
in scrubbing the floor with lemons. During the day several
helped, even teachers kindly lending a hand, but all our efforts
were futile, and the ink obstinately refused to move.
“Later on, oxalic acid came into play, Miss Buss personally
superintending the performance, and being really anxious in case
any of the poison should perchance cling to my fingers.
“All to no good! On Monday the room was to be used by the
Cambridge examiners, and, as a last resource, the carpenter and
his plane were imperatively summoned.
“So ended Black Friday!
“I had bought my experience in the ways of inkstands, a thorough
knowledge of eradicating stains, and a life-long lesson to act
more decisively, paying in return a bill, the items of which ran
thus: the cost of lemons, oxalic acid, and the carpenter; lost
marks, a signature in the defaulters’ book, and the most
miserable day of my school experience.”
Mrs. Bryant continues—
“In the wholeness of the founders view of her work, not character and
intellect only, but physical welfare no less belonged to the school aim.
Always, in some form or another, she had this in mind. The most
punctilious care was taken from the first as regards sanitary conditions
and precautions for wet days. Shoes had always to be changed, and
contrivances for keeping the rest of the clothing dry—by umbrellas,
cloaks, and common sense—were part of the moral order of the place. In
other words, it was treated as a breach of the regulations if a pupil
came into school with her dress wet. The result was, and is, that the
girls manage to keep astonishingly dry. Like other sources of evil, this
one has, in the course of years, tended naturally to decrease, because
girls are more sensibly dressed than they were twenty, ten, or even five
years ago. It is an amusing symptom of the hygienic influence of the
North London School that, in my quest for properly shaped shoes, I find
it best to fall back on the neighbourhood of Camden Road.
“The idea of regular physical education was early expressed in the
institution of calisthenic exercises for a quarter of an hour after the
light lunch in the middle of the morning. The idea grew and became more
systematic as opportunity made its development possible. When the new
buildings were opened, a splendid gymnasium had been provided for the
purpose. Every girl was to have a systematic course of physical training
by means of two half-hour lessons in the week from a regularly trained
teacher, besides the ordinary drill on the other three days. But there
might be abnormal girls who required more or less a special treatment,
and, reflecting on this fact, there arose in Miss Buss’ mind the idea
that the physical education ought, as of course, to be under medical
supervision. This implied that all the pupils should be medically
inspected, and it goes without saying that, to her mind, the medical
inspector should be a woman.
“For some years this post has been held by Miss Julia Cock, M.D., who
has carried out a system of observation, and record sufficient for the
purpose, but not extending to anything like medical attendance.
“The first and essential object was to determine what kind of physical
exercise was required in each case. The normal girl, and the majority of
those even with defects, would be sent to go through the usual course.
For defects, special treatment by exercise would be ordered, and this
given in the afternoon. Three afternoons in the week the gymnasium is
occupied by these special gymnastic classes, and the record of physical
improvement made is worthy perhaps of even more praise than the roll of
examination honours won by the intellectually able. The girls who do
best with much rest and little exercise are also found out and dealt
with accordingly. The physical character of each is recorded in the
medical book, and kept for reference.
“Defects of eyesight are also discovered in many cases, and the parents
informed that there is need to consult an oculist. Other physical
weaknesses, as they thus come to light, can be dealt with similarly if
need be, and the knowledge of them is most valuable in dealing with the
girls in their work. The experiment of medical inspection, as Miss Buss
tried it in her school, has proved an immense benefit, and the idea lay
very near her heart that all schools—especially all girls’
schools—should do likewise. It is one of my regrets that she never knew,
she was too ill, that three memoranda on the subject were given in
evidence to the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, one of the
three being by our medical inspector, Miss Cock, founded on the
experience of the North London Collegiate School.
“As regards intellectual education, it was characteristic of her that
she had not the slightest tendency to attach more importance to her own
than to other subjects. This was not simply—it was partly—the
consequence of an all-round logical view; it went with her elasticity of
imagination and extraordinary power of entering into and sympathizing
with things outside her experience in the ordinary sense. This is the
ideal Prime-Minister quality, and it was hers. She was not a musician,
she did not know mathematics; but I suppose she has not left the
impression more strongly on any two people of understanding their ideals
and supporting them with enthusiasm and sympathy than upon Mr. John
Farmer, of Balliol College, with reference to music, and upon myself in
mathematics. And in itself it is a noteworthy fact that she struck from
the very beginning on the idea that science should be an essential part
of the school curriculum, and elaborated it to so high a pitch that her
school was early described by others as _par excellence_ ‘the science
school.’ Her own scholarship was great in History and in French—genuine
fine scholarship, with the unrivalled power of graphic description and
interesting memory of events which make history-teaching and is so rare,
and with delightful freshness and power in handling a language with a
class. On this side of her work she was herself the perfect artist. For
the study of science there had been little opportunity in her girlhood,
but just what had been denied her was just what she most energetically
supplied. I think she would have been great in science: her mind was
scientific in its ways of work, and she had the practical constructive
talent that, added to thinking power, makes the physicist. The concrete
sciences would have attracted her intellectually more than the abstract.
“But in her ideal of education she came quite naturally and easily
outside her own intellectual tastes and acquirements. So natural was
this to her that she has doubtless left the impression on many of the
younger generation that she was mainly a great administrator rather than
also a great teacher with special tastes and powers of her own.
“Thus it was the more natural to her to realize instinctively, as she
did consciously, the doctrine of the harmonious development of all the
powers as the aim of the school education.
“Even the casual observer could not fail to have been struck by the
ever-growing, ever-assimilating nature of her mind. In this respect she
never grew older; never grew as middle-aged as many people are mentally
at twenty-five. Like the Athenians, she was always ready to hear some
new thing. She was ready to give any reasonable theorist a hearing,
though not necessarily to erect new altars to his ideals. Whenever she
heard of any idea that promised, she would, in later years, speak of it,
and have it discussed at our teachers’ meeting. Then, if it seemed well,
we would hear the propagandist in a lecture, and afterwards discuss the
subject again. The sequel depended on the opinion formed, but most new
ideas, special and general, came our way. The Harrow Music School, the
Royal Drawing Society, and Miss Chreimann’s Calisthenics may be
mentioned in particular as having received her recognition very early.
“Mr. Farmer writes as follows—
“Oxford.
“DEAR MRS. BRYANT,
“It is very difficult for me to write that which I feel
about the loss of Miss Buss.
“Miss Mary Gurney first introduced me to her.
“Soon after that she asked me to examine the music in the North
London Collegiate School. I was afraid at first that she would
not understand my point of view with respect to the study of
music in high schools, But, instead of being misunderstood, she
gave me her sympathy and help from the first in my endeavour to
make music an earnest and educational part of school-work.
“Miss Buss was not a young head-mistress when I first knew her;
but she was, like my greatest school-friend, Dr. Buller, Miss
Mary Gurney, and the dear old Master of Balliol, fearless in her
belief in all that was for the good of schools, and especially
in the redemption of music from being a time-wasting, emotional
accomplishment.
“Miss Buss allowed me to introduce the Harrow Music School
standard text, the purpose of which was to do away with the mere
swagger of certificate-giving, and to make it more a test of the
general work of the school in music. She was always so glad to
find that the majority of girls who did well in music were just
those who were doing well in other school-work.
“I shall always remember her patience and kindness in her
presence during the long examinations. She was never shocked at
my hopes, mostly very wildly expressed, for the future of music
in the education of girls.
“Music, above all studies, needs backing up with the advantage
of a thoroughly good education. It has always been my endeavour
to keep it from encroaching unfairly on the time and strength of
the girls. Miss Buss understood this, and helped to make it
understood.
“You have, my dear Mrs. Bryant, for so long been a witness to
that which I have so clumsily described. Please forgive me.
“Yours very truly,
“JOHN FARMER.”
“To the same purpose is a letter from Dr. Ablett, head of the Royal
Drawing Society—
“So many evidences have come to me of the great part Miss Buss
has played in the development of education, and she gave such
willing and helpful support to the work of this society that I,
personally, unfeignedly mourn her loss.
“Our council will be sorry to lose one of its members who, by
her world-wide reputation, added strength to, and won confidence
for, it.
“Miss Chreimann also bears similar witness—
“Miss Buss was amongst the first to introduce into her school
the eclectic (and original) series of physical exercises which
have been termed my ‘system,’ though my own feeling would always
be—
‘For forms and systems let the fools contest:
Whate’er is best administered is best!’
My aim is to secure equal balance in all the working organs of
the body, with permanence of function and steady gain in beauty
and order, rather than to teach any particular set or sets of
exercises.
“Miss Buss had early been impressed by the vastness of waste
consequent on the physical disabilities of girls, and still more
by the need of the grace that goes with well managed strength.
It was for these ends that she urged me to give my time to the
training of teachers, and the subsequent inspection of their
work, rather than to the endeavour after a physical culture,
which she agreed was necessary, but which was years in advance
of the sentiment, alike of the parents and of the majority of
educationalists.
“Miss Buss probably did more than any other public
school-mistress for the knowledge and adaptation of physical
training to the requirements of girls.”
In conclusion, Mrs. Bryant adds—
“It was with the same eagerness to learn and get help and light
wherever it could be found that Miss Buss welcomed the
institution of the University Examinations for schools and
scholars. Her gratitude to the University of Cambridge for
having been the first to come to the help of the girls was very
beautiful and touching. It would have had to be a very good
reason indeed that would make her substitute Oxford for
Cambridge, and the loyalty of her affectionate preference for
Girton over all other colleges was tender and very deep. She
loved Cambridge as if it had been her own _Alma Mater_. It was
the _Alma Mater_ of so many of her girls in the early struggling
days.
“I spoke of energy of will as one of her striking qualities, and
her whole life illustrates this so well that it only remains to
indicate its influence on the inner life of the school. She was
not always quick to decide unless it was necessary, and then she
decided instantly. Otherwise she deliberated before decision
with great care, weighing all sides of the matter, as she would
say. But once decided, she acted at once, and kept on acting
till the thing was done. That was where she economized force,
and in it lay the secret of much of her power and her tradition.
Her own mind did not admit of pause between decision and act,
and probably there was no quality in other people which tried
her patience more than hesitancy after it was certain what ought
to be done. How natural it is to some people is well known, but
by effort and practice the tendency can of course be mitigated,
if not cured. North-Londoners, from association with her, got
into the way of resembling her to some extent in this respect.
It became the habit of the place—may it long continue—to get
under way with one’s piece of work the instant one knew what it
was. I am very inferior to many of my colleagues in this
respect, and only disguise the fact by economy of another kind,
which perhaps goes naturally with a more slowly moving will; the
economy, namely, of doing my piece of work so that it has not to
be done again. But for simpler things there is no call for this
economy, and the comfort is great of being surrounded by persons
whose instinct it is to translate the idea into the action at
once.
“Her energy was her most obvious quality in school. Everybody
saw that, and each felt that she individually had to live up to
it. Still obvious, but deeper, was her boundless faith in the
possibility of achieving good ends. The choice of the school
motto, ‘We work in hope,’ was characteristic. She pursued her
ends without delay; she pursued them also with the confidence
that in some way or other they would one day be gained. About
her ends her will would be inflexible; about the means of
accomplishing them her invention was elastic, and her mind open.
And I suppose few persons in this world ever carried out their
ends with so much or such well-deserved success. Her secret was
to be uncompromising about essentials only.
“Her faith in the latent possibilities of character, even when
most unpromising, amounted to a principle of educational action,
which she wielded with marvellous effect, because its hold was
even more strong on her heart than on her head. She seemed
almost to believe—but this is an exaggeration—that any one could
be made to do or become anything. She produced wonderful results
in the way of training up efficient workers when others would
have despaired; though sometimes she did it at immense cost to
herself. She believed in every one, but she would let bad work
pass with no one. She was at once the strictest of critics and
the least despondent. Thus she made what she would of many,
especially of those who had very much to do with her in the
earlier years. Not that she was ignorant of their limitations
either, but limitations did not trouble her. She had absolutely
none of that restless critical spirit which requires that
everybody should be made to order, all over again, and
different. She took them as they were, loved them, and made the
best of them in both senses.
“Every girl was good for something to her eye and in her heart.
It was her business—our business—to find out how the most could
be made of her, and to make it. And just in proportion as good
in people was the reality she saw, so was their evil, for the
most part, a transitory unreality. Young people at least are apt
to be and do what you expect of them. She dwelt on the good,
insisted on it to them, wrestled for it with them, established
it in them, and straightway forgot the evil or remembered it
only as a passing phase. And the sign of this large-hearted
sympathy in an optimistic temperament is shown in the special
devotion to Miss Buss of all the so-called naughty girls.
“It is needless to enlarge on her possession of the
administrator’s gift of relying with generous trust upon her
tried helpers. This, too, was in her a matter of the heart quite
as much as of the head. She felt about them as one with her in a
joint work of which in all its phases she spoke as ‘ours,’ not
as ‘mine.’ It was pleasanter, more natural to her, to be the
controlling centre of a plural will than to be a single will
governing others with more or less allowance for their freedom.
As regards the question of the relation of the head to her
assistants, this might be described as the theory of her
practice, elastic as all theories must be in a mind of truly
practical genius. She believed thoroughly in the legal autocracy
of the head as the best form of school government, but in her
view of the autocrat’s standard for himself she expected him to
exercise rule with due regard for ministers and parliaments.”
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