RENAISSANCE OF GIRLS’ EDUCATION
THE
RENAISSANCE OF GIRLS’ EDUCATION IN ENGLAND
A Record of Fifty Years’ Progress
BY ALICE ZIMMERN
(GIRTON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE)
AUTHOR OF ‘METHODS OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA,’ ‘OLD TALES PROM GREECE,’
ETC.
London
A. D. Innes & Company
Limited
1898
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
PREFACE
To all whom it may interest I dedicate this brief summary of the events
which have wrought a peaceful revolution among us during the last fifty
years. Among the many changes of the half-century, the great
transformation in the education of women surely deserves a record. The
workers have been many, the help given of various kinds, yet no event is
isolated, for all are links in one chain of progress. Fifty years ago a
few far-sighted men and women gave the impetus; we who harvest where
they sowed may like to be reminded, in this season of retrospects, of
the great debt we owe them. What has touched the lives of so many women
is the concern of all, and though I shall be proud indeed if my book
prove welcome to teachers, I should wish most of all to address myself
to that old and long-tried friend of literature, the general reader. If
he, or she, can be persuaded, to spend an hour or two, learning the past
and present of the education of our girls, my purpose will have been
accomplished.
To thank for favours received is a pleasant task, but the list of those
who have helped me with this book would prove too long for enumeration.
I desire to offer my heartiest thanks to all who have assisted me with
information, criticism, or in any other way; especially to Miss Beale
for valuable materials and kind hospitality, to Mrs. Bryant and Miss A.
A. M. Rogers for much useful information, to Miss Mary Gurney, Miss Ella
Pycroft, Miss Mary Kennedy, and Mr. W. Edwards for reading portions of
the book, and to Mrs. Edwards for her sympathy and kindness during my
stay in Wales. To the many headmistresses who have allowed me to visit
their schools I offer most cordial thanks, and last, but not least, to
the officials of the Education Library, in particular Mr. Sadler and
Miss Beard, for their courtesy and helpfulness.
ALICE ZIMMERN.
_September 1898._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. BEFORE 1848 1
II. THE FIRST COLLEGES 20
III. LIGHT IN DARK PLACES 38
IV. THE HIGH SCHOOLS 52
V. ENDOWMENTS FOR GIRLS 78
VI. THE WOMEN’S COLLEGES 103
VII. ADMISSION TO THE UNIVERSITIES 126
VIII. BOARDING AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS 149
IX. THE TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACTS 169
X. STATE AID FOR GIRLS 195
XI. THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS OF WALES 215
XII. 1898 234
THE
RENAISSANCE OF GIRLS’ EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
BEFORE 1848
Yes, strange though it may sound, it was in truth a Renaissance—a
revival of the past, and no new experiment. Or perhaps we should more
fitly describe it as the realisation of an old dream, one that has been
dreamed many times in the course of the ages, but has waited till the
nineteenth century for its complete fulfilment. Two thousand years ago
it was seen by Plato, that most practical of idealists, who maintained
that it was for the best interests of the state that its men and women
should be as good as possible. Therefore the education of both was a
matter of public concern. In these latter days this doctrine has won
acceptance, with an even wider significance, due to our democratic
development. The treasures of learning are no longer the property of an
exclusive few, and the privileges of class and sex are breaking down
simultaneously. Education for all, boys and girls, rich and poor, is the
modern demand, which no party dare now refuse to consider. We must cater
not only for the ‘wives of the governors,’ but also for the children of
the slums. All the daughters of all the households of all civilised
countries are to enter into their heritage. The much-discussed ‘ladder’
from the elementary school to the University is becoming a fact; and its
rungs are being widened, that the girls may ascend it side by side with
their brothers. _La carrière ouverte aux talents_, with no distinction
of class, sex, or creed, is the demand of the nineteenth century.
From Plato’s Utopian ‘Republic’ to London of the County Council is a far
cry. Between the two, this question of girls’ education has many times
been raised and temporarily solved. Socrates’ half-jesting dictum, that
women are capable of learning anything which men are willing they should
know, might stand as the motto for nearly every attempt to improve
female education. The instruction given to women at different epochs has
varied directly with the estimation in which they were held. When they
were regarded as slaves or toys it was expedient to keep them in
ignorance; when they were treated honourably as equals, the best gifts
of learning were not thought too good for them.
It is not our place here to dwell on the bright examples of antiquity,
the Neo-Platonist women and Hypatia, the beautiful mathematician of
Alexandria, but rather, turning to our own country, to see how
Christianity has touched the lives of women. Here, as elsewhere, it was
the Church alone that kept alive the flame of knowledge during the
Middle Ages. In the seventh and eighth centuries, that ‘nadir of
learning,’ monks and nuns alike were occupied with literary studies.
They read theology and classics, copied manuscripts, and corresponded in
Latin. Their activity was in accordance with their social position. ‘The
heads of the great religious houses were necessarily persons of
importance, with privileges and great responsibilities. They had
considerable wealth at their disposal, and in authority and influence
they ranked among the nobles of the land, to whom they were often allied
by birth.’[1] The name that naturally occurs first to our minds is that
of the Abbess Hilda, ‘whose counsel was sought even by kings,’ and who
ruled over a double monastery, which became a seminary of bishops and
priests. Hers is no solitary instance. ‘In Anglo-Saxon England,’ writes
Miss Eckenstein, ‘men who attained to distinction received their
training in settlements governed by women. Histories and a chronicle of
unique value were inspired by and drafted under the auspices of Saxon
abbesses.’ And ‘the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as liberal as
that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available writings, whether
by Christian or profane authors.’ The convents were the colleges of
Anglo-Saxon times. The nuns, who lived a life of seclusion and study,
might be compared with the fellows; the students were the successive
groups of girls who came there for education.
Among the many social changes brought about by the Norman Conquest, the
most far-reaching, the introduction of feudalism, established a new
centre of education, which henceforth flourished side by side with the
cloister. The monks still taught the Trivium and Quadrivium—Grammar,
Dialectic, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy—though the
instruction given deserved these high-sounding names little better than
the so-called sciences taught in girls’ schools at the beginning of our
own century. The castle could offer boys a more attractive programme.
The seven knightly accomplishments were to ride, sing, shoot with the
bow, box, hawk, play chess, and write verses. It had something for girls
as well. While the young squires gained their training by service done
to their lord, the _châtelaine_ would gather about her a troop of gentle
maidens, who learned to weave, spin, brew, and distil, and do various
kinds of needlework. They learned a little reading and writing, and in
these arts were somewhat in advance of their brothers, who were trained
to look on books as monkish and womanish, and not quite suited to a
knight and gentleman. The _châtelaine_ herself held an honourable
position. In her lord’s absence she must even take command of the
castle, and the _damoiselles_ must be prepared for their own coming
responsibilities.
The thirteenth century brought a change. The political influence of the
Church, which had been lessened by the Conquest, was revived by the
preaching friars. They introduced a new ideal of monastic life; the
spirit of devotion and asceticism drove out the old love of learning.
New priories sprang up throughout England, but their aims were
different. As the monasteries were more and more becoming centres of
devotion, learning was being driven into the new universities, where the
philosophy of the schoolmen now reigned supreme. Already some colleges
with endowments for poor scholars had been founded at Oxford and
Cambridge, and it was becoming the custom for the monasteries to send
their most promising pupils there. Why did the nuns not follow this
example? Probably the metaphysical disputations then in vogue had few
attractions for them; and the presence of large numbers of men would be
a sufficient reason for keeping aloof, for though the studies of both
sexes might be the same, they were not pursued side by side. Whatever
the cause, it is certain that while masculine learning showed an
ever-growing tendency to leave the cloister, female scholarship was
still closely confined to the convent. But it was degenerating for want
of new life; the nunneries were a survival, not a living growth; their
learning had become ‘poor in substance, cramped in method, and
insufficient in application.’[2] The old order was changing, but somehow
the nuns failed to perceive it. In Erasmus’ day, we are told, the really
learned woman was to be found outside the convent walls, and he adds the
significant remark that her husband approved of her studies. The wrong
done to women by the dissolution was not so much the closing of the
convents as the transference to men of their endowments. The most
flagrant instance is the transformation of St. Radegund’s nunnery at
Cambridge into Jesus College. That this and other instances of
spoliation were possible shows how low the status of women had sunk, and
it is not strange, therefore, that a period of neglected education
should have ensued.
Whatever the cause, the Reformation does not seem to have assisted the
development of women. Perhaps this was partly due to the removal of the
one career that had been open to them, thus forcing all, married and
unmarried, into a dependent position in the household. Luther’s views on
women were not very elevated, and probably a good many of the Reformers
shared them. It may be due to this Protestant influence that in England
women profited less intellectually by the Renaissance than men, or at
any rate in far smaller numbers. Thanks to the new grammar schools,
learning was being made accessible to boys of all classes. When Sir
Thomas More’s dream was realised, and the middle classes, from the
squire to the petty tradesman, were brought into contact with ancient
literature, the daughters were not as well provided as the sons. Some
authorities are of opinion that the original foundations were meant for
both sexes alike, but if so, very few girls of the middle class profited
by their advantages, though some sort of education evidently came to
all. Among the upper classes large numbers of women were carried away by
the enthusiasm of the Renaissance, and learned to read Latin and Greek.
The sixteenth century has always been celebrated for its learned ladies,
as witness Wotton’s oft quoted remark thereon and his comment: ‘One
would think by the effects that it was a proper way of educating them,
since there are no accounts in history of so many great women in any age
as are to be found between the years 1500 and 1600.’ Queen Elizabeth and
Lady Jane Grey are sometimes called exceptions, but this is clearly an
error. Learning was an expensive luxury for women, since it involved the
services of a private tutor, but it had fashion and opinion on its side.
To be learned was accounted a privilege, which called for neither
arrogant boasting nor blushing concealment. Those who did study, would
naturally turn to the best their age could offer them, _i.e._ the new
editions of the classics and the fashionable modern literature. They set
the fashion too as well as followed it. The success of _Euphues_ was
established by its lady readers, and in the domain of polite literature
it was generally acknowledged that they created the standard. When Lyly
wrote ‘Euphues had rather lie shut in a lady’s casket than open in a
scholar’s study,’ he knew well enough that it was not the ladies who
would neglect his book. He confessed as much in its dedication to the
‘Ladies and Gentlewomen of England.’ Nor was there anything new in this.
The lady sat in her bower to read Sidney’s _Arcadia_ as in olden times
she had listened in the hall to the lay of the minstrel. It was still
her part to assign the prize of romance as of valour. The leisure which
made the enjoyment of tale and song possible was essentially the lot of
the rich and noble lady, who neither toiled nor span, but did a more
useful work as guardian of art and literature. The amazing discovery
that ‘Books are a part of man’s prerogative’[3] had not yet been made;
there is certainly not a hint of it in Shakespeare. Nor could such a
doctrine possibly originate under a queen, who, whatever her faults,
cultivated learning herself and honoured it in others. Our thoughts
linger lovingly over that noblest age of English story, when romanticism
and classicism joined their glories for a brief space; when the courtier
was both knight and scholar, and the noble dame’s epitaph praised her as
‘wise and fair and good.’ Seen through the haze of the past, its
splendours stand out in even greater dimension, while all that was small
and weak is obscured to dimness. The very age that followed served as a
foil to throw into yet brighter relief ‘the spacious days of great
Elizabeth.’
It is significant of the rapid degeneration that ensued, that though
between the accession of Henry VIII. and the death of James I., 353
grammar schools were founded in England, not one was added to the number
after 1625. The seventeenth century was a gloomy period for England. If
Elizabeth had given her country peace and glory, the Stuarts were not
long in reversing the position. Disastrous civil wars, political and
theological quarrels, absorbed the best energies of the nation. The
Cavaliers were too frivolous, the Roundheads too grimly earnest to spare
much leisure for learning. In times of war and national peril woman’s
influence is apt to wane, and such power as they had at the Stuart court
was not of the kind to encourage intellectual pursuits. When a scholar
was hardly accounted a gentleman, a lady might be pardoned for
neglecting her intellectual charms. It became the fashion among men to
decry female students, to bid them put away their books and learn to
wash and cook instead. ‘I like not a female poetess at any hand,’ says
one of these self-appointed critics. This attitude was characteristic of
the decline of chivalry and the degradation of woman’s position. ‘There
is not so much as a Don Quixote of the quill left,’ writes Mary Astell
in 1694, ‘to succour the distressed damsels.’ The age of courtesy being
over, women must help themselves, and she takes up the cudgels for her
sex. ‘A man ought no more to value himself on being wiser than a woman,’
she remarks pertinently, ‘if he owes his advantage to a better education
and greater means of information, than he ought to boast of courage for
beating a man when his hands were bound.’[4] Hers is the old thesis,
that women are quite capable of learning if only men will not put
hindrances in their way. Even so the girls’ curriculum of her day does
not seem to have been as meagre as is often assumed. She tells us that
when the boys go to grammar schools the girls are sent ‘to
boarding-schools or other places to learn needlework, dancing, singing,
music, drawing, painting, and other accomplishments ... and French,
which is now very fashionable.’ This description which would almost have
served at the beginning of our own century, is not as gloomy as Defoe’s,
written at about the same time. Girls, he tells us, learned ‘to stitch
and sew and make baubles. They are taught to read indeed, and perhaps to
write their names or so, and this is the height of a woman’s
education.’[5] Both agree in condemning its narrowness. Defoe cannot
believe that ‘God Almighty ever made them such glorious creatures, and
furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and delightful to mankind,
with souls capable of the same accomplishment with men, and all to be
only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves.’ Mary Astell maintains
that ‘according to the rate that young women are educated, according to
the way their time is spent, they are destined to folly and
impertinence, to say no worse.’ She protests, as Mrs. Makins had done
before her,[6] against the new fashion of ignorant women, and implores
her sisters to help bring back the good old times, and take a lesson
from the ladies of the previous century. Both Defoe and Mary Astell
recommend the same project, the establishment of women’s colleges, thus
anticipating our own times by more than a century and a half. Defoe’s
colleges would have been superior boarding-schools, one in every county
and about ten for the city of London; Mary Astell’s plan was to combine
religious and intellectual aims. She contemplated ‘a seminary to stock
the kingdom with pious and prudent ladies, whose good example, it is to
be hoped, will so influence the rest of their sex, that women may no
longer pass for those little, useless, and impertinent animals which the
ill conduct of too many has caused them to be mistaken for.’[7] But it
must also try to ‘expel that cloud of ignorance which custom has
involved us in, to furnish our minds with a stock of solid and useful
knowledge, that the souls of women may no longer be the only unadorned
and neglected things.’ Nothing came of either project; they belong to
the domain of unfulfilled dreams.
The new century brought little improvement. Anne was not of a
sufficiently independent character to influence greatly the lives and
pursuits of her subjects. As was natural in the reign of a Queen, the
position and dignity of women were somewhat raised; and in that
‘Augustan age’ there was one class of literature specially addressed to
the ladies, the newly invented essay. Addison really wanted to elevate
their position and social influence, but his success was literary rather
than moral. If we may trust the novelists of the last century, public
morality was never at a lower ebb. The men of that day worshipped
idleness, and it was not surprising that they did not care to see their
wives and mistresses at work. Show was the aim throughout, and the
‘accomplishment’ reigned supreme. The second half of the century
witnessed a great increase in the boarding-school system. Hitherto it
had been confined to the fashionable world; now tradesmen and farmers
who had made some money began to emulate their ‘betters.’ Imitations of
the fashionable schools sprang up everywhere. ‘We have,’ says the
heroine of General Burgoyne’s play, _The Heiress_, “Young ladies boarded
and educated” upon blue boards in gold letters in every village; with a
strolling player for a dancing-master, and a deserter from Dunkirk to
teach the French language.’
The eighteenth century, too, had its distinguished women; indeed, the
Blue-Stocking Club, so called, it seems, from the dress of one of its
masculine _habitués_, is regarded as the representative group of learned
ladies. But Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Chapone, and Hannah More were exceptions,
and themselves only too conscious of their opposition to the rest of
their sex. There was a touch of the _précieuse_ about some of them which
exposed them to a good deal of cheap satire, and they were keenly alive
to the antagonism with which the other sex regarded them. Mrs. Chapone
even advises her niece to avoid the study of classics and science, for
fear of ‘exciting envy in one sex and jealousy in the other.’ Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu complains bitterly that ‘there is hardly a creature in
the world more despicable and more liable to universal ridicule than
that of a learned woman,’ while ‘folly is reckoned so much our proper
sphere, we are sooner pardoned any excesses of that than the least
pretensions to reading and good sense.’
Some of these last century women were practical reformers, who realised
the pernicious results of this false opinion about their sex. Among
these was Hannah More, who entered a most earnest protest against the
excessive accomplishment craze. The lower middle class were emulating
the upper in their endeavour to make their daughters ‘accomplished young
ladies,’ while they quite forgot that ‘the profession of ladies to which
the best of their education should be turned is that of daughters,
wives, mothers, and mistresses of families.’[8] She even ventured to fly
in the face of public opinion by asserting that ‘a young lady may excel
in speaking French and Italian, may repeat a few passages from a volume
of extracts, play like a professor, and sing like a siren,’ and yet be
very badly educated, if her mind remains untrained. ‘The kind of
knowledge that they commonly do acquire is easily attained,’ they learn
everything in a superficial question-and-answer way, or through
abridgments, beauties, and compendiums, instead of reading books that
require thought and attention. As we read her _Strictures on Female
Education_ we rub our eyes and look at the date once more. Is this,
indeed, Hannah More writing a hundred years ago, or have we stumbled
upon a stray extract from Mr. Bryce’s report to the Schools’ Inquiry
Commission in 1867? ‘She should pursue every kind of study which will
teach her to elicit truth, which will lead her to be intent upon
realities; will give precision to her ideas; will make an exact mind.’
She quotes Dr. Johnson’s opinion that ‘a woman cannot have too much
arithmetic.’ Had the worthy doctor a prevision of a High School
time-table?
Hannah More’s influence does not seem to have been very lasting. Her
contemptuous remark, that we might as well talk about the rights of
children as the rights of women, shows that she had not much real grasp
of the educational problem. Both should, in her opinion, be relegated to
their proper subordinate places. She was right in despising the
frivolity of her day, and condemning the constant round of pleasure in
which fashionable women spent their lives, but she was almost too severe
to be helpful. Far more valuable was Miss Edgeworth’s work, which was
constructive as well as critical. Her educational romances, in which she
contrasts the good and bad governess, the sensible and frivolous girl,
are thoroughly readable even at the present day, and must have proved
useful to many readers who lighted unawares on the powder in the jam.
_Practical Education_, written in conjunction with her father, throws
valuable light on contemporary conditions, and advances theories that
are still worthy of our notice. The ‘practical toy shop,’ provided with
all manner of carpenter’s tools, with wood properly prepared for the
young workman, and with screws, nails, glue, emery-paper, etc., is still
to seek; her remarks on the two schools, the one teaching ‘by dint of
reiterated pain and terror,’ the other ‘with the help of counters and
coaxing and gingerbread,’ are not altogether out of date. Nor have we
yet learned to pay a good governess £300 a year, on the ground that her
working days are few, and she ought to lay by for a comfortable old age.
Her severest strictures, like Hannah More’s, are reserved for ‘female
accomplishments.’ Their chief use is that ‘they are supposed to increase
a young lady’s chance of a prize in the matrimonial lottery.’ Hence,
when the end is achieved, they are thrown aside. ‘As soon as a young
lady is married, does she not frequently discover that she really has no
leisure to cultivate talents which take up so much time?’ Nor is it
quite certain that they are as efficacious as is generally supposed. The
market is becoming overstocked, for ‘every young lady, and every young
woman is now a young lady, has some pretension to accomplishments. She
draws a little; or she plays a little; or she speaks French a little.’
Accomplishments are becoming so general ‘that they cannot be considered
as the distinguishing characteristics of even a gentlewoman’s
education.’ Since they are no longer ‘exclusive,’ she hopes they may be
cast aside for something better. Her indictment against the female
education of her day is that ‘sentiment and ridicule have conspired to
represent reason, knowledge, and science as unsuitable and dangerous to
women; yet, at the same time, wit and superficial acquirements in
literature have been the object of admiration in society; so that this
dangerous inference has been drawn, almost without our perceiving its
fallacy, that superficial knowledge is more desirable in women than
accurate knowledge.’ It is interesting to find this complaint repeated
in 1826 by an anonymous writer,[9] who maintains the old dictum that
‘females are not behind males in capacity, and excel them in diligence
and docility,’ but they are handicapped by ‘an education of mere
externals and of show.’ There is a want of stamina in girls’ education,
and as for their school-books, they are mere combinations of words used
as ‘substitutes or apologies for ideas.’
Maria Edgeworth’s influence should have been considerable, but turning
from her works to her contemporaries and immediate successors, it seems
doubtful whether they even understood her. Her stories, whose most
useful lessons were addressed to parents, were turned into children’s
books; and the demand for a more solid education simply led to an
increase of the memory and book-work in schools. In spite of her
strictures on the uselessness of a knowledge of isolated facts, and the
attempts of Mrs. Barbauld and others to supply something better, the
catechism system continued to grow and flourish. Large amounts of memory
work were added to the piano and drawing, which still held their own,
and the results were not merely negative as regards intellectual value,
but positive in their injurious effects on health. Miss Frances Power
Cobbe in her description of the fashionable boarding-school to which she
was sent in 1836, speaks of the pages of prose the girls were expected
to learn by heart, amid the din of constant practising. ‘Not that which
was good in itself or useful to the community, or even that which would
be delightful to ourselves, but that which would make us admired in
society was the _raison-d’être_ of each requirement. Everything was
taught in the inverse ratio of its true importance. At the bottom of the
scale were Morals and Religion, and at the top were Music and Dancing,
miserably poor music too, of the Italian school then in vogue, and
generally performed in a showy and tasteless manner on harp or
piano.’[10] Miss Cobbe thinks this education far worse than that
received by her mother in 1790, when much less was attempted, and there
was no ‘packing the brains of girls with facts.’ Besides ‘grammar and
geography, and a very fair share of history’ (ancient from Rollin, and
sacred from Mrs. Trimmer), they ‘learned to speak and read French with a
very good accent, and to play the harpsichord with taste.’ Clearly
things were on the downward course, and in the first half of this
century the education of both sexes was in some respects in a worse
condition in England than at any time before or since. Mere ignorance
would have been comparatively harmless, but there never was a time when
educational theories were more fashionable or more perverse. Miss
Catherine Sinclair, who wrote in the forties and fifties, lifted up her
voice, in _Modern Accomplishments_, against the system of cram and
display then prevailing. ‘Lady Howard’s utmost ingenuity was exercised
in devising plans of study for her daughter, each of which required to
be tried under the dynasty of a different governess, so that by the time
Matilda Howard attained the age of sixteen, she had been successively
taught by eight, all of whom were instructed in the last method that had
been invented for making young ladies accomplished on the newest
pattern.’ All these governesses were foreign, according to the fashion
of the day; at last an English lady of Edgworthian type was discovered,
who trained the mind instead of overloading the memory, and all ended
happily. Precocity and display were what parents demanded, and schools
and governesses contrived to supply the requirements. Miss Sinclair’s
accounts of premature death and lifelong ill-health may have been
overdrawn, but doubtless she put her finger on the weak spot when she
wrote: ‘Nothing is popular now that requires thought in young people,
who are constantly devouring books, but never digesting them, and are
allowed no time to think.’
The better the school, in the acceptation of that day, the worse
probably the result; and those girls whose parents could not afford the
expensive governess or the ‘finishing-school,’ often had the best of it,
so long as they were not sent to one of the cheap and inefficient
imitations. By a curious irony the one attempt made early in the century
to give a good education at a small expense, was that which through
Charlotte Brontë’s genius has been held up to everlasting contumely. The
Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowen Bridge undertook, for the small sum of
£14 a year, to clothe, feed, lodge, and educate the daughters of
clergymen. In 1825, the year when Charlotte Brontë was there, the Rev.
W. Carus Wilson (too well known as Mr. Brocklehurst), appealing for
additional funds, stated that an annual income of £250, together with
the fees, would be sufficient to meet current expenses. A comparison of
this modest demand with the sums raised in our own day for women’s
colleges, helps us to realise the revolution that has taken place in
public opinion. Even so most of the subscribers seem to have been Mr.
Wilson’s relations, and it was only as a charity for the poor clergy,
with a side-thought of getting better governesses at low terms, that it
awakened any interest at all. Still it was considered a remarkable
achievement. In 1833, Mr. Venn Elliott, who had visited the school in
its new premises at Casterton, and been present at the consecration of
the church built in its neighbourhood, wrote: ‘I would rather have built
this school and church than Blenheim and Burleigh. So Dr. Watts said he
would rather have written Baxter’s _Call to the Unconverted_ than
Milton’s _Paradise Lost_.’ The result of this visit was the foundation
of St. Mary’s Hall at Brighton. It still exists, and gives a really
first-class education at a low fee. Other schools were founded in
imitation; and in spite of the sordid economy of those early days, and
the suffering it entailed on the weakly, they deserve full recognition
as almost the only institutions which attempted in the early part of the
century to provide a good and cheap education for girls. The tradition
of sound study survived, and in 1867 the Casterton institution came in
for a word of praise from the Royal Commissioners, amid their almost
universal condemnation of existing girls’ schools.
The benefits which a woman’s reign always confers on women have been
experienced to the full during the long and peaceful reign of our
present Queen. The interest taken by her and the Prince Consort in arts
and letters, and in the general improvement of the people, set an
example that was readily followed. Ladies of the upper and middle
classes began to take a keener interest in the lives of the poor, and in
dealing with the problems they thus encountered were often brought to
realise their own want of education. There was a stir and a movement
towards something better. The views of men were gradually changing, as
the ideal of womanhood set by a purer Court became more elevated. Sixty
years of a woman’s wise and beneficent rule have done much to restore
the glories of Elizabeth’s day. Like the revival of letters, which
communicated to the whole world the learning which had once belonged to
one small people, this other renaissance brought knowledge, not only to
the convent pupil and the lady of leisure, but to all the daughters of
the nation. This widening has helped to fix the roots more firmly, and
we may hope and believe that the gains of this century are not to be
lost, but, enriched by all the wealth of the future, to continue for
many a generation to come.