Bluestockings (33 page)

34. Medical students at Bedford College perilously demonstrate ‘why weak hearts fail’,
c.
1915.

35. A drawing class in the art studio, Bedford College, in the 1890s.

36. Trixie Pearson’s Class of 1932, St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

Notes

For full details of sources quoted, please see the Select Bibliography
.

INTRODUCTION

  1
. Rule, extant until the 1920s, from a London University hall of residence.

  2
. Dyhouse,
Students
, 4. See also Boyd,
St Mary’s College
, 4, and Bremner,
Education of Girls
, 7.

  3
. Samuel Heywood, quoted in Turner,
Equality for Some
, 46.

  4
. I have come across another meaning of ‘Bluestocking’ in the course of my research. It’s a cocktail, invented by the Roberts family to celebrate their daughter gaining a place at university: one tablespoon of gin, one of blue curaçao, three of clear apple juice, and a fat blue cherry.

1. INGENIOUS AND LEARNED LADIES

  1
. Makin,
An Essay to Revive the Antient Education
, 3.

  2
. Beatrice Walsh, Reminiscences (1932–6), St Hilda’s College Archives. I have inferred certain characteristics of Mrs Pearson’s personality and past history from her affectionate daughter’s papers.

  3
. Hester Thrale (1741–1821) – at this stage still a brewer’s wife – was ambivalent about what she called ‘the Blues’, and joined those who ridiculed them when it suited her. Later, after her marriage to the Italian musician Gabriel Piozzi in
1784, she was happy to relax into London’s intellectual life.

  4
.
Westminster Magazine
, July 1773 (copy not seen), quoted in Myers,
The Bluestocking Circle
, 271.

  5
. From ‘The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu’, a review attributed to Sir Walter Scott in the
Quarterly Review
, October 1813, 38.

  6
. Wollstonecraft,
Vindication
, 296. Wollstonecraft’s argument in the
Vindication
expanded a theme first published in her essay
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
(1787), in which she argued that organized learning for girls was the only way for them to achieve rationality and mental independence.

  7
. Wortley Montagu,
Works
, vol. 4, 185.

  8
. Walter Map,
The Letter of Valerius to Ruffinus
(
c.
1180), ch. 9, quoted in Blamires,
Woman Defamed
, 105.

  9
. Simon D’Ewes, quoted in Teague,
Bathsua Makin
, 31.

10
. Makin, op. cit., 3, 23.

11
. Ibid., 22.

12
. Woolley,
Gentlewoman’s Companion
, 67.

13
. ‘Elegy’,
Letters and Poems in Honour of… Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle
, 166.

14
. Astell,
Serious Proposal
, part 1, 10.

15
. Defoe,
An Essay Upon Projects
, 113, 114.

16
. Ibid., 114.

2. WORKING IN HOPE

  1
. Frances Buss, quoted in Kamm,
How Diff erent from Us
, 104.

  2
. Lloyd,
Memoir
, 57.

  3
.
The Princess
was published in 1847. Tennyson was inspired by taking part in a Mechanics’ Institute (later Birkbeck College) summer outing to Maidstone, where students enjoyed
a garden fête and debated the accessibility of education to working men. Lectures at the institute were open to women at the time, too. In the poem, Tennyson’s heroine dreams of an isolated, inviolable college for ladies where bluestockings like her might be immersed in the pursuit of learning. The scheme turns out to be impractical, of course: the heroine marries a prince who has managed to break in, and the college is promptly disbanded and turned into a hospital – much more useful.

  4
. Firth,
Constance Louisa Maynard
, 102–3.

  5
. Nightingale, ‘Cassandra’,
Suggestions for Thought
, vol. 2, 402.

  6
. Firth, op. cit., 43.

  7
. See Turner,
Equality for Some
, 58.

  8
. Weeton,
Journal of a Governess
, 13–14, quoted in Turner, op. cit., 68.

  9
. Turner, op. cit., 68.

10
. Firth, op. cit., 22.

11
. Marshall,
What I Remember
, 6.

12
. From Helena Wells,
Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females
(1799), quoted in Broughton and Symes (eds.),
The Governess
, 63.

13
. Maurice,
Queen’s College
, 1, 5.

14
. Cobbe,
Female Education
, 4.

15
. Charlotte Yonge to Emily Davies, ‘Davies Family Chronicle’ (1830–1921), 622 (GCPP Davies 1), Girton College Archives.

16
. Sewell,
Principles of Education
, vol. II, 219–20.

17
. Martin,
Queen Victoria
, 69–70.

18
.
The English Woman’s Journal
was launched, with Bodichon as its editor, in 1858. In 1864, it continued as the
Alexandra Magazine
.

19
. The University Extension Movement was developed in
the late 1860s as a network matching willing lecturers from the few established universities at the time with Educational Associations around the country.

20
. Firth, op. cit., 55.

21
. Quoted in Bradbrook,
‘That Infidel Place’
, 10–11.

22
. Firth, op. cit., 105–6.

23
. The college was not called Girton until 1872; it moved to Girton village a year later. For a full and entertaining history, see Bradbrook, op. cit.

3. INVADING ACADEMIA

  1
. From the trio ‘Gently Gently’, Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan’s
Princess Ida
, first performed in London, January 1884.

  2
. Sir Basil Champneys (1842–1935) was a friend of the Sidgwicks; he also designed Somerville library, and buildings at Lady Margaret Hall and Bedford College.

  3
. Dilys Lloyd Davies MSS (1877–8), Newnham College Archives.

  4
. During the 1930s, when chaperones were dispensed with, it was still customary to state on social invitations to undergraduettes the comforting assurance that ‘Ladies will be Present’. The implication was that they should chaperone each other.

  5
. See note 3.

  6
. Dorothea Beale envisaged St Hilda’s originally as a teacher-training college solely for Cheltenham Ladies’ College students. During the early 1890s, however, too few Cheltenham Ladies applied to keep it financially viable, so admission was opened to others.

  7
. Jessie Emmerson’s reminiscences, published in the
St Hugh’s College Chronicle
(1931), St Hugh’s College Archives.

  8
.
Schools Inquiry Commission Report
of James Bryce,
Commissioner for Lancashire (1867–8), quoted in McWilliams-Tullberg,
Women at Cambridge
, 25.

  9
.
Punch
, vol. 80 (1881), 130.

10
. Dyhouse,
No Distinction of Sex?
, 7.

11
. The constituent colleges in the Victoria University federation gained their own charters in time: Liverpool in 1903, Leeds in 1904, and Manchester in 1935. Sheffield broke away from London in 1905 and Bristol in 1909, but Exeter, Hull, Leicester, Nottingham, and Southampton did not award their own degrees until after the Second World War.

12
. The Taunton Commission was originally intended to investigate the state of elementary education for boys in England; Misses Buss, Beale, and Davies lobbied for girls’ schools to be included, and gave evidence to the commissioners. One of the commission’s eventual requirements was the establishment of a girls’ grammar school in every town in England with a population over 4,000 people.

13
. Edith Cass MSS (1909), University of Leeds Archives.

14
.
The Mermaid
(the university magazine), vol. 1 (1904–5), 135, University of Birmingham Library.

15
. Emmerson, op. cit.

16
. Bertha Johnson, quoted in Bailey (ed.),
Lady Margaret Hall
, 48.

17
.
The Macleod Family Magazine
, vol. 1, no. 11 (November 1881), typescript copy (GCRF 4/1/24) in Girton College Archives.

18
. Bessie Callender’s reminiscences, quoted in Bird (ed.),
Doves and Dons
(unpaginated).

19
. Tylecote,
Education of Women at Manchester University
, 32; Tout,
Ashburne Hall
, 3; University of Manchester’s Department of Women Archives UA/4/23 (reminiscences).

20
. Constance Watson MSS (1909), Somerville College Archives.

21
. Students’ Record Books (1897–1918), King’s College London Archives.

22
. Students’ Record Book, St Mary’s College Archives, Durham.

23
.
The Gryphon
(university magazine), vol. IX (1905–6), 12, University of Leeds Library.

24
. Audrey Brodhurst MSS (1931), Somerville College Archives.

25
. J. M. Upcott’s reminiscences from a questionnaire to 1907–10 alumnae, Somerville College Archives.

26
. See note 24.

27
. Rathbone,
‘The Dales’
, 77.

28
. Sarah Mason, Diaries (1878–82), private collection; extracts also held in Girton College Archives.

29
. See note 1.

30
. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s description of women in
The Princess
, canto VI, lines 290–91.

31
. ‘M.P.S.’, ‘The Disadvantages of Higher Education’,
Girl’s Own Paper
, February 1882, 333.

4. MOST ABHORRED OF ALL TYPES

  1
.
Yggdrasil
(magazine of Ashburne Hall, Manchester University), Christmas term, 1902.

  2
. Annie Rogers, secretary to the governing body for the Society of Home Students (later St Anne’s), and the first Classics tutor at St Hugh’s. Annie was a brilliant academic: her father – a professor at Oxford – entered her for the Local examinations in 1873, using just her initials; when the results were issued, she was top of the list, and therefore offered scholarships at both Worcester College and Balliol. There was considerable embarrassment when her gender was revealed.

  3
. ‘A Woman’s Reply’,
Durham University Journal
, 10 June 1899.

  4
. Former Oxford High School pupil Margaret Fletcher puts it beautifully in her book,
O Call Back Yesterday
(1939): ‘She must not trade with [her brains], but keep them in a napkin that she might one day hand them on unimpaired to a possible son.’ Quoted in Avery,
The Best Type of Girl
, 55.

  5
. Maudsley, ‘Sex in Mind and Education’, 467, 472.

  6
. Quoted in Burstyn,
Victorian Education
, 94.

  7
. Turner,
Equality for Some
, 126.

  8
. Dr N. Allen, quoted in Maudsley, op. cit., 477.

  9
. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, ‘Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply’.

10
. Ibid., 590.

11
. ‘The Intellectual Inferiority of Women’,
Durham University Journal
, 13 May 1899.

12
. Burgon,
To Educate Young Women
, 29.