[-100-]
CHAPTER X
WOMEN'S SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES
(1896)
THERE is a mistaken impression among
Americans that the English girl is dull and awkward. Shy and silent she is apt
to be until she is addressed by her elders. She does not volunteer her opinion
very often, although she has opinions; but she habitually defers to superior age
and wisdom. The English girl, ordinarily, is a most retiring creature; plainly
dressed, kept in the background, she is consequently spared aging prematurely
and does not acquire precocity that would add nothing to her charm.
Nevertheless, she is neither unobservant nor heedless; she is
watchful and ready to do any little kindness, to render any unobtrusive
attention; your sofa pillow is adjusted at a more comfortable angle; the foot
stool is quietly slipped under your feet, the screen is placed before the too
fervid blaze; the shade is quietly drawn and all these friendly offices are
performed by the same deft hand-the little maiden who comes and goes as silently
as a shadow.
If you talk to the intelligent
English school-girl you will find a characteristic thoroughness in all that she
has acquired. You will discover that she is not only well read, but that she
assimilates what she reads, and can criticize and weigh and compare with
surprising judgment and accuracy. A little girl of sixteen sat by me one day at
an informal luncheon; her cheeks were as pink as a rose; her clear skin showed
the salutary effect of the cold [-101-] bath and
daily exercise. Her glossy hair was smoothly parted, a silky fringe softening
the outlines of her brow, and the thick locks were braided and tied with a knot
of ribbon, like a young child's; she wore a simple but perfectly tidy gown of
brown merino. She was not asked nor expected to join in the conversation, but
her close attention made it very evident that she was listening with interest
and with perfect comprehension to all that was said. Presently her mother
remarked:
"Ellen has just passed her exams at Girton and we all
feel very much relieved." And yet the little maid had given no hint of
being other than almost a child not long liberated from the nursery. To use
their own phrase the English girl always "goes in" for some especial
study or accomplishment. Among well bred middle-class people she is taught the
useful and practical household arts; to make her own plain clothes, to darn and
mend, and this acquired, the finer branches of needlework. She is also taught to
cook and to keep accounts. This latter is considered most essential, and the
English girl is generally a very well trained accountant. It is undoubtedly this
early teaching which makes many English women such thorough women of business.
Carelessness, inaccuracy or ignorance in the matter of expenditure they regard
with about as much disapproval as we show toward insufficient knowledge of
spelling or the multiplication table.
Young girls of well-to-do families are
usually skilled in all out-of-door sports, in tennis, golf and rowing, and now
that they have overcome their prejudice against the wheel they have become
admirable cyclists - having learned that they may venture forth unchaperoned and
return unhindered, in safety. The bicycle in England, as in the United States,
is doing its salutary work in freeing young girls from needless convention,
rendering them self-reliant and independent, with no sacrifice of their modesty.
[-102-] There is, however, a
very marked contrast, even under the new dispensation, between the status of the
English and the American girl in the family. In the United States, in
ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, it is the daughter for whom sacrifices are
made, and economies practiced; it is the daughter who must be well dressed, well
educated and, when it is possible, have the advantage of travel. It is
unquestionably the daughter who has an all-powerful influence over her father.
The English parent says "my girls;" the American parent says "my
daughters" and the difference in the two terms tells the whole story. But
American parents reason, and not without justice, since there is no entail upon
the family estates, that it is far easier for the sons than for the daughters to
earn a living, and it is a salutary training for young men to be thrown upon
their own resources. For this reason sons and daughters usually inherit equally
and where a discrimination has been made, it is apt to be made in favor of the
daughter. The reverse is true in England and it is somewhat painful to note the
subordinate place which the daughter takes in the English household, as compared
to the sons; how she fetches and carries and makes herself the willing servant
of the lad fresh from Eton or Harrow, or the undergraduate coming home from
Oxford or Cambridge for his holidays. It is not to be inferred from this that
there is lack of affection for the girls in the family; strong affection exists
but it differs in kind, rather than in degree, from that which the American girl
accepts as a matter of course, and which it often happens she does not value as
she should.
England has known the stress of hard times during the past
ten years, and this, with her better and more practical training, has made the
English girl of to-day restless under uncomfortable conditions which she feels
confident that she has the brains and energy to improve. [-103-]
In Great Britain, as in our own Eastern States, the female greatly exceeds the
male population-the younger sons having emigrated to South Africa, to Canada, to
India or to the Australian colonies. In large families it has become more and
more difficult to provide for the daughters who remain at home, and for whom
satisfactory marriages cannot be arranged, as might have been done once, when
tastes and customs were simpler and less was demanded by society. English girls,
therefore, like their American sisters, are becoming interested in the important
question of earning a livelihood - a far more difficult matter in over-crowded
England, where the inevitable disparity exists between the wages and salary of
men and women engaged in the same pursuits, than in the United States. The
employment of women in banks, in telegraph and post-offices has given employment
to thousands; stenography has furnished work to other thousands, and in London
and the larger cities women have opened offices, occasionally employing a large
force of assistants, and these have done extremely well. Women are also
succeeding as physicians and dentists and the trained nurse is in demand, not
only in all the hospitals, but in private families, even accompanying the army
in its foreign campaigns - an important part of the surgeon's staff - and a
contrast to the disfavor in which they are held by military authorities in the
United States.
Photography has been
successfully studied and several of the most fashionable photographers in London
are women - one at least of whom holds the royal warrant. Amateur photography is
a favorite amusement and I have seen some collections that would have done
credit to professional photographers of high repute.
Educated English women are far greater lovers of nature than
American women; they not only have an appreciative affection for the fields and
woods, but they [-104-] spend every available
moment of the short summer out of doors. Many are accomplished botanists, and
are as skillful with the brush and pencil as with the pen; sketching in England
seems to be regarded as necessary an accomplishment as writing, and there are
very few among the educated classes who do not sketch from life more or less
cleverly. They take great pride in their herbariums; others study ornithology
and make collections of eggs which they arrange and catalogue with great skill.
I met at Birmingham a charming young girl who was devoting
her spare time to the study of the butterflies of Great Britain. She had almost
all the species, beautifully mounted, the work of her own skillful fingers. She
told me, with much diffidence, that there was a delightful excitement in getting
together such a collection. She had spent a part of the summer on the Yorkshire
moors and said that she had chased butterflies with her net, scrambling over
stones, through thickets of brake and heather, sometimes for miles. Her especial
deed of prowess of which she was very proud, was the capture of two fine
specimens of the "Purple Emperor."
"These," she explained, "are very difficult to
catch; they live in the top of oak trees, but they can be tempted to come down
by putting under the tree a mutton bone that has gone off' a little; they can
smell it - their sense of smell is very keen - and then they come."
She also confided to me that certain rare and beautiful moths
could be taken after dark "by sprinkling the trunks of trees with beer and
sugar."
One of the most striking differences in the training of
English and American girls is the active life of one as compared with the
disposition of the other to remain indoors. Our growing taste for athletics,
however, is fast reforming the latter evil. But with the rich food and
confectionery which very young American girls are per-[-105-]mitted
to eat, their theatre and dancing parties, the hothouse air which they breathe,
the premature appearance of the lover upon the scene, it is doubtful if they
will ever acquire the ruggedness and simplicity of the English girl. It will be
some years, even after golf and tennis shall have done their perfect work,
before the American girl can rival in physical robustness her more symetrically
developed sister - a result to be desired where intellectual vigor and physical
strength are equally balanced.
While boys in England are sent to the great public schools,
or to smaller and less expensive schools, girls are taught at home, or they,
too, are sent to boarding school, either in England or on the continent. But the
latter is not so common a custom as in the United States, and there are few
colleges corresponding to those like Vassar or Bryn Mawr in the United States,
in which the daughters of the wealthy are educated. Even in Girton, Newnham and
Mary Somerville the daughters of families of high position are a very small
minority. The standard schools corresponding to, though very unlike the public
schools of this country, are patronized by the poorer classes only, and rarely,
if ever, by persons who are at all able to pay tuition in private schools, or
employ a tutor or governess.
The difficulty of popularizing University training for girls
amongst the wealthier class is incomprehensible to Americans, accustomed as they
are to the patronage which their own higher institutions receive everywhere
throughout their own country. It is all the more difficult to comprehend since
the life of both students and teachers at Newnham and Girton impresses the
visitor as being almost an ideal one. For the young women in both colleges there
is a judicious mixture of work and recreation, both of which are pursued with
great diligence and enjoyment. It should be explained that the method of
instruction dif-[-106-]fers wholly from the methods
employed in our colleges, there being nothing that corresponds to our recitation
system. Students "read," that is, study in their rooms, or in rooms
set apart for them, with the assistance of a "coach" or tutor; they
attend lectures, and take notes, studying for themselves the subject which the
lecturer presents, the examination being the test of what has been acquired.
Except for the law exacting residence at the University for a stated period, and
the necessity of attending the lectures, a student might study elsewhere than at
Oxford and Cambridge coming up only for examination.
Girton is two miles from Cambridge, a gradual ascent all the
way, the stately buildings of the college crowning an eminence which commands an
extensive view of the surrounding country. After one has left behind the narrow,
crooked streets of the old town, the road is bordered by green meadows and
woodlands and at the time of my visit the eye was delighted with blossoming
hedgerows and blooming gardens while the ear was enchanted with skylarks and
singing thrushes. The outer gates stood open and I drove to the entrance
alighting under the arch to ring the bell which was answered by a white-capped
portress. I was shown into a large well-lighted, stone-paved hall, the arched
ceiling supported by slender stone columns, two or three good pictures relieving
the bareness of the grey walls; a window commanded a view of a grassy tennis
court, and as I waited groups of girls came and went talking and laughing gaily,
though not noisily, the picture of radiant health. They seemed to be under no
surveillance, and I first saw here that naturalness and freedom from petty
restraint which is so apparent and so delightful at both Girton and Newnham. The
students appeared to be much younger and less mature than those of our colleges,
their short dresses and braided hair giv-[-107-]ing
them an air of extreme girlishness. I was told, however, that they were really
older than pupils in similar schools in the United States, eighteen being the
minimum age at which students can matriculate at Girton. Miss Welch, the Head
Mistress, was engaged, but she sent one of her assistants to show me about, a
clever and agreeable young woman who told me that she had studied three years at
Bryn Mawr and the University of Chicago, where she had taken her degree. She
spoke in the highest terms of both institutions, the opportunities which they
offered to women and talked with much enthusiasm of the United States and the
friends she had made while there. I was first shown the sitting-room of the Head
Mistress which was beautifully furnished, filled with books, pictures,
flower-laden tables, lounges and comfortable arm chairs. The students' rooms
were like those in American colleges - a sitting-room and bed-room in each suite
and these, too, were well ventilated, well lighted and most cheerful and
attractive, beautifully furnished, with flowers everywhere, on mantels, tables
and window-sills; plants growing thriftily in pots, bowls of roses and
mignonette and single lilies in slender crystal vases. The individuality of the
occupant was very apparent in the collection of tennis rackets, cyclists caps
and photographs, but the poster craze had either passed, or had never reached
Girton, and cotillion favors were not among the trophies that the American
girl-student prizes and so lavishly displays. Near the head of each stairway,
framed and glazed, was a collection of visiting cards each bearing the name of a
student having an apartment in that especial corridor. In the hall below, an
automatic indicator showed whether the occupant of the apartment was
"Out" or "In." The lecture rooms at Girton are very small
compared to those in most American colleges and they are carpeted and furnished,
though less ornamented, [-108-] quite like the
sitting-rooms at Smith or Vassar. Around a large table in the middle of the
floor sit probably half a dozen girls with the instructor at the head of the
table; each student is supplied with pen, ink and paper and notes are taken as
the lecturer proceeds. The quill, it may be said, has not yet been superseded by
more modern inventions, either at Girton or Newnham. There is no royal road to
success in any English school or University-and the student can make no progress
and attain no honor which has not been faithfully earned by impartial marks, and
it is this conscientiousness, both in achievement and award, that has made an
English degree of such intrinsic value and such an honor to the man or woman
upon whom it has been conferred. It is also one and the chief reason why its
refusal is such a serious injustice in England-this and the fact that with many
of the degrees at the English Universities go substantial scholarships worth
several hundred pounds per annum. Not only are degrees refused, but the
girl-students of Girton and Newnham are not permitted to wear the cap and gown,
although the colleges are practically adjuncts of the University, the lectures
and all the requirements being the same as in the older colleges.
In the beautiful library, which was a large, well lighted
room, a group of girls were gathered about a table busily making notes and
turning over the pages of encyclopedias and lexicons. One or two glanced up as
we entered, but they were all too much interested and occupied to be interrupted
by the presence of chance visitors. The great dining-room looked out upon a
broad lawn with borders of roses, lilies and honeysuckles which were in full
bloom; at one end of the hall was a "high table" - the old distinction
which has never been adopted in the United States, and at which sits the Head
Mistress and the resident teachers. Breakfast was over and the maids were [-109-]
preparing the tables for the one o'clock luncheon, but the cloth was still
adorned with bowls of honeysuckles and pansies which had been gathered while
they were yet wet with dew. The meals, both at Girton and Newnham, are served
much earlier than in ordinary English households -breakfast being at eight,
luncheon at one and dinner at half past six. The great dining-hall at Girton and
the apartment of the Head Mistress are separated by a corridor and may be thrown
together when the student and Faculty are "At Home," the dining-hall
being set apart for dancing to which it is admirably adapted. The laboratory was
small, but the students attend lectures in chemistry among other branches, at
the University lecture rooms at stated hours, those who choose to do so going to
and fro in carriages. This single item of expense, I am told, amounted to
something like £1,000 per annum. Each day a list of lectures, the hour, topic,
name of the lecturer and the names of the students attending each lecture is
posted in the lobby at the main entrance.
Girton is surrounded by fine lawns, and beautiful shrubbery
with the most brilliant and luxuriant flowers at every turn. There were no set
beds filled with stiff geraniums and foliage plants, but there were clumps of
lilies, pansies and forget-me-nots - all the fragrant, old fashioned flowers
planted together, but carefully tended and yet apparently growing at their own
sweet will; an extensive grass court and one gravel court of equal dimensions
were provided for the tennis players, with roads for the cyclists, secluded
walks for pedestrians, and sheltered nooks and shady seats for those who love a
book and solitude.
As I came away my guide showed me a "short cut across
the grounds-a narrow, shady alley with the laburnums, lilacs and chestnuts
meeting overhead and knit together by the wandering tendrils of the honeysuckle,
and with borders of rainbow hued annuals all the way. [-110-]
Nowhere else in the world do the sweet old fashioned flowers bloom in such
profusion and perfection as in England, and my recollections of Girton will
always be associated with the fragrance of honeysuckles and roses.
I had been invited to dine in hall at Newnham the same
evening with one of the teachers. The college is within the boundaries of
Cambridge, north of Selwyn College, and has accomodations for one hundred
students, a similar number being in attendance at Girton, where it has been
necessary to convert some of the lecture rooms into bedrooms. Fortunately,
although it was somewhat late, my hostess was still waiting for me, and she
escorted me into the hall. It was a noble apartment probably one hundred feet in
length by forty in width, with a decoration of delicate garlands and tracery.
But as the arched ceiling was far beyond reach of the house-maid's brush it
seemed miraculous that it could be kept so dazzlingly white; the wide lawns, the
shrubbery screening the building from the road and the clean electric light,
however, explained the absence of dust and soot. Over the platform set apart for
"high table" hung fine portraits of Miss Clough, Professor Sidgewick,
the founder of Newnham, and other of its benefactors. Dinner progressed with a
buzz of conversation and it had all the gaiety and animation of a large and very
congenial party. It was pleasant to perceive the comradeship between the young
students and the teachers: there was nothing, on one hand, of the frigid and
unbending attitude which sometimes characterizes the manner of the college
professor, nor, on the other, any lack of deference and respect; there appeared
to be between the students and teachers the best possible understanding, mutual
interest and good will. At table, American co-educational and political
institutions were discussed, many questions being asked and answered so far as I
was able to answer them. It was admitted [-111-] that
beginning without the trammels of tradition and custom, it was possible for
co-educational universities to accomplish what could not be undertaken in
England where there was yet great prejudice to overcome; much strength and time
would yet have to be expended in opposing obstacles which we had never
known-means and energy diverted from practical undertakings. The question of
residence had been one unsurmountable difficulty in the English plan of
co-education, and there was a desire to know how this had been obviated. When it
was explained that there were separate halls on opposite sides of the quadrangle
for the young women, quite removed from those occupied by men, that these halls
were presided over by women deans who were members of the faculty, and that all
the amenities of a well-ordered home were preserved, it was acknowledged to be
practicable enough - for Americans.
While the dinner was not elaborate it was abundant and
excellent; much better, candor compels me to state, than is ever served to women
students in many of our own colleges. There was a nourishing soup-and English
soup is always delicious - an excellent roast of mutton, roast fowl with bread
sauce, vegetables and a tart. At the conclusion of the meal, which was eaten in
the leisurely fashion which we have yet to learn, students and teachers rose and
a short grace was said; then the girls raced away to play tennis for the two
remaining hours of daylight, or to ride their bicycles around the garden walks.
After dinner I was shown over the college which, like Girton
is modern, comfortable and, with its electric lights, bath rooms, supplies of
hot and cold water was a contrast to the venerable colleges for men. The rooms
for the students, however, are not en suite, as at Girton, and the rent
is consequently less. All were tastefully furnished, however, with dainty modern
furniture, the walls prettily [-112-] decorated,
while the broad cushioned window seats were very attractive. There were the same
small lecture rooms, as at Girton, and examinations being in progress many of
the girls, instead of joining in the games, resumed their reading. When we
returned to the Lady Principal's charming drawing-room I was introduced to a
tall, slender, brown-eyed girl, very modest and shy, plainly dressed and in
every way most unassuming. This was a no less personage than Phillipa Fawcett,
the mathematical prodigy who had carried off the honors in 1890 and who should
have been enjoying the fruits of her triumphs. When I told her what a furore her
success had occasioned in America she cast down her eyes and said not a word;
she seemed at a loss even to realize that she had done anything very remarkable.
Miss Fawcett held the position of instructor in mathematics - one which she has
filled with great credit although still very young. The faculty of Newnham were
hopeful that justice would finally be done the women graduates in the vexed
question of conferring degrees; they did not think that the opponents of the
movement represented public opinion; it was the sentiment of the minority who,
unfortunately, happened to be clothed with a little brief authority. After a
look through the main corridor, we crossed the quadrangle to the library which
quite overflowed the quarters assigned it, a new building being then under
consideration. Here also, a few of the more diligent students were at work
making the most of the quiet and the freedom from interruption.
"This is the drawing-room for the exclusive use of the
teachers," said Miss Clough leading the way down a broad passage and
opening a door. The room into which I was ushered was cheerful and attractive in
the extreme; flowers in bowls and vases had been placed wherever they could be
bestowed, there was a rich fragrance of coffee, and the ladies helped themselves
in the pleasant informal [-113-] English fashion,
from a generous pot that was kept warm upon the hearth. I gas introduced to Miss
Clough's coworkers, many more questions concerning our schools were asked and
answered.
We were to attend a lecture at half past eight and as the
time approached I said good-bye to Newnham very reluctantly, turning back for a
parting look at the now deserted gardens in which the thrushes were still
singing. Lights were shining from the students' windows; they had betaken
themselves to their work with as much earnestness as they had shown in their
recreation.
It had been a glimpse of an ideal student's life, tranquilly
pursued in that atmosphere of learning, in the seclusion which earnest study
demands, and I could not but reflect that young women trained under such happy
conditions must exercise a marked and important influence in the future affairs
of England, either within their home, or in public life, as they themselves
shall ordain.