Girls,” which opened February, 1878, with thirty-one pupils, which
number steadily increased to about two hundred.
Its graduates are in all the colleges of the State, at present, to the
number of about forty, and they are among the best prepared who enter.
Not only the graduates of the school, but the whole community, must ever
hold in grateful memory the names of those who, as representatives of
the “Society for the University Education of Women,” worked wisely and
indefatigably for Boston girls: Mrs. I. Tisdale Talbot, Mrs. James T.
Fields, Miss Florence Cushing.
By following the history of high schools down to the present day in one
section of the North Atlantic States, taken as a type of progress, we
have not paused to note the few helpful agencies which were gradually
developed.
Returning to the beginning of the nineteenth century it is easier to
discover what women lacked than what they enjoyed in the way of
intellectual stimulus. Books and newspapers were few enough to be highly
valued by all.
In Boston there was a public library as early as 1637, but women were
not considered as patrons. The bold venture, on the part of the sex, of
invading the quiet precincts of the reading room of the library of the
Boston Athenæum, was made, after a decade or two of the nineteenth
century had passed, by a shy woman, grown courageous only through her
eagerness for knowledge. This was Hannah Adams, who had learned Greek
and Latin from some theological students boarding in her father’s house,
and who had written books. The innovation shocked Boston people, who
declared her out of her sphere. They could not foresee that half a
century later there would be more women than men readers in the great
public library of the city.
Nor was it considered proper for ladies to attend public lectures, nor
to appear in public assemblies except those of a religious character.
Either as cause or consequence of this the Lyceum audiences were so rude
that it would not have been agreeable for ladies to be present.
In 1828 the Boston Lyceum was started, and after considerable discussion
women were allowed to attend lectures. This so quickened the interest
and improved the manners that lectures became so popular that the
largest halls were required to hold the audiences.
There is something pathetic, as showing how small were the pecuniary
resources of women, in the fact that it was customary, at least in the
smaller cities, to admit them to lectures at about two-thirds the price
of men. “The Lowell Institute,” Boston, secured the utmost service to
its great benefaction by making no discrimination against women in its
free courses of lectures.
Among the English authors who were the resource of this country in way
of literature, there began to be known a few women, in whom strong
natural impulse had been fostered by exceptional educational opportunity
until they ventured to use the pen and even to publish. This was usually
done timidly, often protestingly, and one woman, afterwards
distinguished, screened her talent behind her father’s name.
Lady Anne Barnard, who wrote “Auld Robin Gray,” for some reason or other
kept the secret of her authorship for fifty years.
Mr. Edgeworth suppressed a translation which his daughter Maria had
made, from the French, of a work on education “because his friend, Mr.
Day, the author of ‘Sanford and Merton,’ had such a horror of female
authors and their writings,” and it was published only after Mr. Day’s
death.
It is curious to note how large a ratio of the female writers of this
time involve, in their essays or novels, some reference to the need of
education for their sex. On the contrary, however, Mrs. Barbauld,
herself a classical scholar and thinker, and both happy and useful
through her acquirements, opposed the establishment of an academy for
young ladies. She “approved a college and every motive of emulation for
young men,” but thought that “young ladies ought only to have _such a
general tincture of knowledge_ as to make them agreeable companions to a
man of sense, and ought to gain these accomplishments in a more quiet
and unobserved manner, from intercourse and conversation at home, with a
father, brother, or friend. She regarded herself as peculiar, and not a
rule for others.”
Late in the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft issued a strong and
direct appeal for a recognition of the intellectual needs and capacities
of women. She shocked the world into antagonism by her opinions, and by
her use of the word “rights,” as applied to her sex.
Much interest was felt in the graceful letters of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, and society found entertainment in the small talk of the
heroines of Frances Burney, “Evelina,” “Cecilia,” and “Rosa Matilda.”
Twenty years after the eloquent appeal had been made for “The Rights of
Women,” Hannah More, in “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,” introduced to the
novel-reading world the subject of female education, with a tact and
moderation which the stronger cravings of Mary Wollstonecraft did not
permit. Without offensive presumption, and with deference to the
superior claim of the other sex to the whole loaves, she meekly, but
plainly, suggested the relish of the female mind for intellectual
crumbs. The more favorable reception of her milder views, which was said
“to have caused more than one dignified clergyman to take down his Eton
grammar from the shelf, to initiate his daughters into the hitherto
forbidden mysteries of ‘hic-hæc-hoc,’” goes to prove, by analogy, the
theory of the high potency school of homœopathists, for the smaller the
dose administered the greater appear to have been the results.
The tender sentiment and graceful verse of Mrs. Hemans, and the sad
domestic experience of Hon. Mrs. Norton, from whose unmasked sorrows her
husband could gather pecuniary return, and the sturdy, intellectual
vigor of Harriet Martineau, who grappled with the problems of political
economy and social ethics, and was the friend and counselor of the first
statesmen of her time, could not fail to appeal, on their several lines,
to women of corresponding type, if not of equal gifts of expression, on
both sides of the Atlantic. So education was going on for women in other
ways than in schools, which still furnished them limited supplies, both
in quantity and quality.
Among the voices which directly or indirectly were calling women to
higher levels of intelligence and of thought, was that of the celebrated
wit and divine, Sidney Smith, who proved by his claims for them, what he
said of himself, “I have a passionate love for common justice and for
common sense.” In the _Edinburgh Review_, of which he was one of the
founders, he had a way of asking such pointed inquiries as whether the
world had hitherto found any advantage in keeping half the people in
ignorance, and whether, if women were better educated, men might not
become better educated too; and he adds, “Just as though the care and
solicitude which a mother feels for her children, depended on her
ignorance of Greek and mathematics, and that she would desert her infant
for a quadratic equation!”
But so strong are the bonds of prejudice, that, although this was as
early as 1810, abundant cause has been found down to the present day to
iterate and reiterate the same arguments, and still to pierce the bubble
of conceit of superior right with the arrows of wit and sarcasm.
To show what the best schools open to girls were offering meantime, we
quote what “one who had as good advantages in 1808 as New England then
afforded,” gives as her course of study: “Music, geography, Murray’s
Grammar, with Pope’s Essay on Man for a parsing book, Blair’s Rhetoric,
Composition, and embroidery on satin. These were my studies and my
accomplishments.”
“Twenty-five years later than that,” says the aged lady once before
quoted, “a considerable part of the gain I brought from a private school
in Charlestown, Mass., was a knowledge of sixty lace stitches.”[3]
Looking back to this period from the vantage ground of less than a
century, most women of nowadays would echo the sentiment of the small
boy, one of four brothers, who heard a visitor say to his mother: “What
a pity one of your boys had not been a girl!” Dropping his game to take
in the full significance of her words, he called out: “I’d like to know
who’d ’a benn ’er! I wouldn’t ’a benn ’er; Ed wouldn’t ’a benn ’er; Joe
wouldn’t ’a benn ’er, and I’d like to know who would ’a benn ’er!”
The third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century marked an epoch
in education through the service done by a few teachers, who seemed to
have fresh inspirations as to the capabilities of women, and practical
ability to embody them. They helped to verify the forecast of Rev.
Joseph Emerson, principal of the Academy at Byfield, Mass.
Mr. Emerson was deeply interested in the theme of the millennium, and
regarded woman, in the capacity of educator, as the hope of the world’s
salvation. Unlike his cotemporaries, he believed in educating young
women as thoroughly as young men, and in 1822 predicted “a time when
higher institutions for the education of young women would be as needful
as colleges for young men.” Among his pupils was Mary Lyon.
The pioneer in the new departure was Mrs. Emma Hart Willard, born in
1787, in Connecticut, into a home of liberal thought and tender
affection. The clearness of intellect and keen sense of justice which
characterized her life, were all indicated, when, as a young woman, on
settling her father’s straightened estate, she insisted that children
have no claim as compared with the mother’s superior right to what she
has helped to earn. From a child she was noted for interesting herself
in the politics of the day. To relieve her husband from financial
difficulties, and, as she says, “with the further motive of keeping a
better school than those about me,” she established a boarding school at
Middlebury. This was the beginning of thirty years’ service as a
teacher, during which she taught 5000 pupils, one in ten of whom became
teachers. She aimed to make her pupils comprehend the subject taught,
and to give them power to communicate what they knew. Says her
biographer, Dr. John Lord, “Her profession was an art. She loved it as
Palestrina loved music and as Michael Angelo loved painting, and it was
its own reward.” There was no flattery to her pupils nor to their
parents. Her regular duties, and her never-ending struggle for
self-improvement and for better methods of instruction, kept her at her
work from ten and sometimes for fifteen hours per day. She keenly felt
the disadvantages under which she labored. She wrote: “The Professors of
the college attended my examinations, although I was advised by the
President that it would not be becoming in me, nor a safe precedent, if
I should attend theirs; so, as I had no teacher in learning my new
studies, I had no model in teaching or examining them. But I had faith
in the clear conclusions of my own mind. I knew that nothing could be
truer than truth, and hence I fearlessly brought to examination before
the learned the classes to which had been taught the studies I had just
acquired.... My neighborhood to Middlebury College made me feel bitterly
the disparity in educational facilities between the two sexes, and I
hoped if the matter was once set before the men as legislators they
would be ready to correct the error.”
To this end Mrs. Willard prepared an address to the public, which in
1819, when she resided in New York, she presented to the New York
Legislature. As the views set forth mark a distinct departure in
educational demands for women, however familiar or antiquated they may
now seem, they are quoted and summarized here. She published them only
after long and thoughtful deliberation, and said, “I knew that I should
be regarded as visionary, almost to insanity, should I utter the
expectations that I secretly entertain.” She asks that as the State has
endowed institutions for its sons it shall do the same for its
daughters, and “no longer leave them to become the prey of private
adventurers, the result of which has been to make the daughters of the
rich frivolous and those of the poor drudges.” She laments that “the end
of education of one sex has been to please the other ... until we have
come to be considered the pampered and wayward babies of society, who
must have some rattle put into our hands to keep us from doing mischief
to ourselves or to others. But reason and religion teach that we, too,
are primary existences; that it is for us to move in the orbit of our
duty around the Holy Center of Perfection, the companions, not the
satellites of men.”
Mrs. Willard fears that “should the conclusion be almost admitted that
our sex, too, are the legitimate children of the Legislature, and that
it is their duty to afford us a share of their paternal bounty, the
phantom of a college-learned lady would be ready to rise up and destroy
every good resolution in our favor.”
To show that it is not a masculine education that is here recommended,
Mrs. Willard sketches her ideal of a female seminary. She desires it “to
be adapted to the female character and duties, and her first plea is
that to which the softer sex should be formed.” “To raise the female
character will be to raise that of men.... It would be desirable that
the young ladies should spend part of their Sabbaths in hearing
discussions relative to the peculiar duties of their sex. The difficulty
is not that we are at a loss what sciences we ought to learn, but that
we have not proper advantages for learning any.... Many writers have
given us excellent advice in regard to what we should be taught, but no
Legislature has provided us the means of instruction.... In some of the
sciences proper to our sex the books written for the other would need
alteration, because in some they presuppose more knowledge than female
pupils would possess, in others they have parts not particularly
interesting to our sex, and omit subjects immediately relating to their
pursuits. Domestic instructions should be considered important. Why may
not housewifery be reduced to a system as well as other arts?
“If women were properly fitted for instruction they would be likely to
teach children better than the other sex; they could afford to do it
cheaper; and men might be at liberty to add to the wealth of the nation
by any of those thousand occupations from which women are necessarily
debarred.”
While “coarse men laughed at this proposition to endow a seminary for
girls,” the plan was so well received by the Legislature that Mrs.
Willard’s Seminary at Waterford was incorporated, and placed on the list
of institutions which received a share of the literary fund. Though this
was a small recognition of a large need, to New York belongs the honor
of making the first appropriation of public funds for the higher
education of women.
The character of the support given to Mrs. Willard is more encouraging
than the legislative action. Governor Clinton, a man of great
educational foresight, recommended Mrs. Willard’s plan in these words,
which incidentally indicate common sentiment at the time: “As this is
the only attempt ever made to promote the education of the female sex by
the patronage of government.... I trust you will not be deterred by
commonplace ridicule from extending your munificence to this meritorious
work.” Distinguished men advocated the plan before the New York
Legislature, and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others wrote letters
favoring it, all with little success.
A bill passed the Senate granting $2000 to the seminary of Mrs. Willard
at Waterford, but failed in the Lower House.
It was at this seminary that in 1820 a young lady was publicly examined
in geometry, and “it called forth a storm of ridicule.”
The corporation of Troy, N. Y., came to the rescue of Mrs. Willard’s
project, and raised $4000 by tax, and another fund by subscription, and
erected a building of brick, to which Mrs. Willard came in 1821. She was
convinced that “young women are capable of applying themselves to the
higher branches of knowledge as well as young men,” and that the study
of domestic economy could be pursued at the same time. Developing these
theories she made for the “Troy Female Seminary” and its pupils a
distinguished reputation, and gave a decided uplift to the standard of
female education.
More than two hundred institutions of the grade of Troy Seminary are now
reckoned, extending to South America and to Athens, Greece. Half the
number are in the Southern United States, and two-thirds of them confer
degrees.
Associated with Mrs. Willard at Troy, in the department of science, was
her distinguished sister, Mrs. Almira Lincoln Phelps. Later she was the
head of “Patapsco Institute,” a female diocesan school of high
reputation. She was the second woman elected a member of the “American
Association for Advancement of Science,” and in 1866 read before that
body a paper on “The Religious and Scientific Character and Writings of
Edward Hitchcock,” and in 1878, one on “The Infidel Tendencies of Modern
Science.” Her educational works on botany, chemistry, geology, and
natural philosophy had a large circulation.
Names which soon rose to high distinction in educational work were those
of Miss Grant and Miss Lyon, of Massachusetts, Miss Catherine Fiske of
Keene, N. H., Miss Catherine Beecher of Connecticut, and the Misses
Longstreth of Philadelphia, Pa.
The work of Miss Fiske was nearly cotemporary with that of Mrs. Willard.
For twenty-three years, up to her death in 1836, she carried on a school
which received some 2500 pupils to a course of study which embraced
botany, chemistry, astronomy, and “Watts on the Mind.”
Miss Catherine Beecher, who was endowed with the marked individuality of
her family, conducted a seminary at Hartford, Conn., from 1822 to 1832,
and later one at Cincinnati, O. Her course of study included Latin, and
calisthenic training was a conspicuous feature. She gave prominence in
her instruction to the worth of domestic skill.
She wrote text-books on mental and moral philosophy and upon theology,
and did not forget to prove by publishing “a domestic receipt book,”
that, though learned, she had not soared above the true sphere of woman.
To the schools already mentioned came pupils from every State in the
Union, either from families of means or to receive the generosity of the
principals.
Mary Lyon was born among the Massachusetts hills in 1797, and graduated
from the position of teacher in the little schoolhouses, and again as a
student from Byfield Academy; then from the charge of Adams Academy at
Derry, N. H., and from a like position in Ipswich Academy, Mass., in
both which she was associated with Miss Grant. To her was due the
conception of “a school which shall put within reach of students of
moderate means such opportunities that the wealthy cannot find better
ones.”
To the execution of her plan the gathering of a few thousand dollars was
necessary. The labor involved may be inferred from the fact that in the
list of contributions the sum of fifty cents repeatedly appears. The
most serious obstacles were found in the antagonism to what seemed to
many a needless project. Said Dr. Hitchcock: “Respectable periodicals
were charged with sarcasm and enmity to Miss Lyon’s plans. She remained
unruffled.”
When, in 1834, the Massachusetts General Association declined to indorse
the enterprise, a Doctor of Divinity made haste to say, “You see that
the measure has utterly failed. Let this page of Divine Providence be
attentively considered in relation to this matter!”
But in face of all disheartenments, in 1837 Mount Holyoke Seminary was
opened in the beautiful Connecticut valley. The mode of living was for a
time almost ascetic. The work of the house was mainly done by the
pupils, but the cost, lights and fuel excepted, was only sixty dollars
per school year of forty weeks, and so continued for sixteen years.
Bible study held a leading place in the curriculum.
It was Miss Lyon’s ambition to make the course equal to that required
for admission to college, and she planned for steady growth from the
small beginnings. Nobly have her expectations been fulfilled!
The hindrances encountered again indicate the slow growth of public
sentiment. It was desired that the ancient and some of the modern
languages should be studied, but it was necessary to wait ten years
before Latin could appear in the course, because “the views of the
community would not allow it.” As an optional study it was pursued in
classes every year after the first. So French, which was taught from the
very first year, became a part of the course only in 1877, after the
lapse of forty years.
As time has passed, the thorough work done, and the steadily expanding
course of study have won to the institution devoted friends, who have
added generously to its grounds, its buildings, and its funds. Once the
State has been asked for aid, mainly for payment for a gymnasium, and a
grant of $40,000 was obtained in 1867.
The triple strain of study, labor, and economy, under the stimulus of
lofty aims, might well have given cause, in those early days, for
anxiety on the score of health, but statistics were tabulated in 1867
which showed the comparative longevity of graduates of eight
institutions, covering a period of thirty years. The colleges noted were
“Amherst,” “Bowdoin,” “Brown,” “Dartmouth,” “Harvard,” “Williams,” and
“Yale.”
Exclusive of mortality in war, the record of “Mount Holyoke Seminary”
was more favorable than any other except that of “Williams College,”
which fell two and one-half per cent. below it in mortality, while
“Dartmouth” exceeded it by more than thirty-eight per cent.
It has been the theory of “Mount Holyoke Seminary” that she must have
every advantage that the state of education will allow. She must be a
college _in fact_, whether or not she take the name.
In this she reversed the theory of many of the 400 institutions in the
United States, which easily take the name of college first. Recently her
advanced course of study, pursued by 200 pupils, seemed to justify her
adding to her powers and to her dignities, and in 1888 the Massachusetts
Legislature granted a charter “authorizing Mount Holyoke Seminary and
College to confer such degrees and diplomas as are conferred by any
university, college or seminary of learning in this Commonwealth.”
Educational institutions, which have taken form and gathered impetus
from Mount Holyoke Seminary, are to be found not only from ocean to
ocean in the United States, including the “Cherokee Seminary,” founded
by John Ross in the Indian Territory in 1851, but in Turkey, in Spain,
in Persia, in Japan, and in Cape Colony, South Africa.
After display of so great administrative ability as appeared in Miss
Lyon and her successors, it strikes one as still another mark of the
traditional reluctance to recognize true values, that close upon half a
century from the founding of the institution had passed before the name
of a woman appeared in the list of trustees. Meantime every principal of
the seminary had been a woman, every resident physician had been a
woman, and every anniversary address had been made by a man.
The debt which the public owes to a few individuals who have used
lavishly, for its benefit, their own great endowments, whether of brains
or of money, before this same public was conscious of its own highest
needs, is distinctly traceable in the kindergarten, kitchen-garden,
industrial school, college, and university movements of the present day.
Truly, many of these to whom much has been given have read their duty in
the light of the scripture, “Of him much shall be required.” When values
are once demonstrated to the people, they are ever ready to carry on
important work with liberality.