NEWNHAM COLLEGE, GATEWAY This shows the east front, and is called the Pfeiffer Building. The whole of the buildings are in the Queen Anne style, and were designed by Basil Champneys. The Bronze Gates were placed here as a memorial to Miss Clough.NEWNHAM COLLEGE, GATEWAYThis shows the east front, and is called the Pfeiffer Building. The whole of the buildings are in the Queen Anne style, and were designed by Basil Champneys. The Bronze Gates were placed here as a memorial to Miss Clough.
the rooms occupied. The college is governed by a Council, and presided over by a Principal, Old Hall Sidgwick Hall and Clough Hall having each a resident vice-principal.[472]Miss Clough hoped to effect a real and lasting union between the old students and Newnham—that the college might be the support of the students, and the students of the college. It was a principle she had always present to her mind, and she herself did much to realise it. School and college have long bestowed this advantage on men, which is reinforced by the support men are accustomed to give to each other; but all this is lacking for the woman who goes forth into the world to fend for herself. University life might however do much to supply the want, and it is to be hoped that women will form a tradition on the point, as men have done. The constitution of the college at least preserves some part of its first Principal’s idea, old students have from the first had a share in the government and a place on the Council.
Candidates for entrance must pass the College Entrance examination (of the same standard as the university Previous Examination), unless they have already taken equivalent examinations. The greater number read for a tripos, but students may follow special lines of study. As to its university successes—the first tripos to be taken was the Moral Sciences(1874), and here Newnham students at once obtained the highest honours.[473]In 1876 Sir George Humphry,[474]as one of the examiners for the Natural Sciences tripos, when he met his fellow examiners said “I don’t know, gentlemen, who your first is, but my first is a man called Ogle.” The man called Ogle was a Newnham student.[475]In 1883 first classes were obtained in the Second Part of the Classical tripos, but Newnham waited till 1885 for its two first wranglers. In 1890 the University Calendar inserts in its Mathematical tripos list: “P. G. Fawcett, above the Senior Wrangler.” Miss Fawcett obtained (it was reported) several hundred marks above the university senior wrangler Bennett of John’s. It is customary to ring the bell of Great S. Mary’s in honour of thisenfant gatéof Cambridge university; but Mr. Bennett stopped the ringing, and a bonfire at Newnham celebrated the occasion. In the History tripos two Firsts were obtained in 1879, and this tripos has frequently been duplicated with another—the Moral Sciences, Modern Languages, Mathematical, Classical, or Law. The first woman to take the two historic triposes, mathematical and classical, together, was Miss E. M. Creak in 1875. The first examinations in the Medieval and Modern Languages tripos were passed in 1886, 1887, and 1888, whenFirsts were obtained, and 30% of first classes have been taken in this tripos. Newnham has indeed been remarkable from the beginning for the number of its first class honours in the university lists.
Former Newnham students.
There have been 880 honour students, and the total number of past and present students is 1600.[476]Like the Girtonians, old Newnhamites are to be found engaged in all kinds of work and in every corner of the world, and like Girton they have their large share of the teachers in the County and High schools of the country; the towns which are perhaps most conspicuous for the number of Cambridge ‘graduates’ being Norwich, Exeter, Cambridge, and Birmingham. Among the mathematicians one is lecturer on Physics in the London School of Medicine for Women, another is mathematical lecturer at the Cambridge Training College, a third is warden of the House for Women Students at Liverpool, a fourth (who took the Natural Sciences as a second tripos) is senior physician in a Bombay hospital. Others are lecturers in the Civil Service Department of King’s College London, and others again are teaching in Toronto, Cape Town, the Training College of Cape Colony, in Nova Scotia, the diocesan school at Lahore,and at an Indian mission school; one is assistant investigator in the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, another who was secretary for secondary education in the Transvaal is now Chief Assistant on the Education Committee (Executive Office) of the L.C.C. The classics are engaged as classical tutors in Columbia University, in Trinity College Melbourne, at Mysore, and Cape Colony, at the Girls’ High school at Poona, and as lecturers on history in University College Cardiff, on Method in the Chancery Lane Training school of the L.C.C., as assistant to the Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen, and as members of the educational committees of the Staffordshire County Council and Newcastle Town Council. The moralists have posts as lecturers at Newnham, as Mistress of Method at University College Bristol, and in the training department of the government school for girls at Cairo, as member of the Chiswick education committee, and as sub-warden of the Women’s University Settlement at Southwark; and a senior moralist was first Principal of the Training College Cambridge. The natural scientists lecture on physiology in the London School of Medicine, on chemistry in Holloway College, are to be found in the geological research department of Birmingham University, as Quain student of botany in University College London, and as assistant demonstrator in geology to the Woodwardian professor at Cambridge. One is in Bloemfontein, one is sanitary inspector at Hampstead, another assistant curator of the museum at Cape Town, and another in the missionary
THE GRANARY ON THE CAM Coe Fen is on the left, and Prof. George Darwin’s House on the right of the Granary. This view is taken close to Queens’ College.THE GRANARY ON THE CAMCoe Fen is on the left, and Prof. George Darwin’s House on the right of the Granary. This view is taken close to Queens’ College.
school at Tokio; and a daughter of a late master of S. John’s is a market gardener. The historical students are to be found teaching in New Zealand, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, and Winnipeg, lecturing in English literature in Birmingham University, assisting the Professor of Education and assistant secretary in the faculty of commerce and administration in Manchester University, Principal of S. Margaret’s Hall Dublin, of the Cambridge Training College, of the Diocesan school at Lahore, of the missionary school at Kobé, Japan, superintendent of the women students in University College Bangor, and on the Education committee of the Somerset County Council. The Medieval and Modern Languages students are to be found as tutor and lecturer in French at University College Bristol, as readers in German at Bryn Mawr College Philadelphia, lecturers in English and French at Holloway College, mistress of the Ladies’ College Durban, and of the convent school Cavendish Square. Teaching in Queen’s College Barbadoes, in Londonderry, Brecon, and Guernsey (Newnham and Girton students are to be found in both the Channel Islands), Vice-principal of the Samuel Morley Memorial College London, and, not least interesting, lecturer at the University Extension College Exeter. One is assistant librarian of the Acton library Cambridge, another almoner of King’s College hospital, and a third is on the Education committee of the Gateshead County borough Council. Among the 658 who have not taken triposes,[477]amongthe usual number of principalships and head and assistant mistress-ships of schools and colleges, we find old students lecturing in History at the Women’s College Baltimore, demonstrating in Physics at Bryn Mawr College Philadelphia, lecturer at Smith College Northampton U.S.A., Professor at Wellesley College Massachusetts, tutor at Owens College Manchester, head of the Presbyterian school Calcutta, head mistress of the Church Missionaries’ High school Agra, warden of the Women’s University Settlement Southwark (and ex-vice-principal of Newnham College), and Principal of Alexandra College, Dublin (LL.D.of Dublinhonoris causa). One is clinical assistant at the Royal Free hospital, another is in the superintendent’s office at Guy’s, a third is a physician at Newcastle-on-Tyne and member of the County borough Education committee. There is a lecturer in botany at Holloway, the director of a lyceum at Berlin, a teacher and superintendent of a class for blind women (Association for the Welfare of the Blind), a clerk to London university, a member of the council of Queen’s College London, and the secretary of the Association of University Women Teachers. These old students are also to be found in Toronto, the West Indies, Vancouver, New South Wales, New Zealand, Pietermaritzburg, Natal, Johannesburg, North China, New York, and Christiania; and on the Education committees of the Dorset, Herefordshire, and West Sussex County Councils, on theCroydon Education committee, and lecturing on English literature and on classical archaeology.
A large number of students take the tripos with a view to tuition, with which the above lists are, as we see, mainly concerned; but an account of the literary output of Newnham students is in course of preparation.
Newnham has formed a collegiate character which is partly due to elements in its original constitution, partly to its first principal, and partly to its physical vicinity to the university. To take the last first. The college has always benefited by what one of the professors once described to the present writer as “the life of the university passing through it.” It was not only this proximity, but the fact that Newnham was the product of the interest taken by university men in the advanced education of women—(Girton of a just and fully justified claim to university education made by women for women)—which made the acquirement of this character easier: and Newnham has in a marked degree the character of the university which harbours it—its cult of solid learning, its width and range, the absence of all pretentiousness, of that which every man and woman educated at Cambridge abhors as “priggishness.” The delightful informality of Newnham and the liking for simple appearances is already outlined in the first Principal’s views about the scheme and the new building; “nothing elaborate or costly” is wanted: “The simple Cambridge machinery will be found all the better and all the more lasting because it suggesteditself so very naturally, and almost, so to speak, created itself. It is all the better for a college, as for other institutions, when it is not made, but grows.”[478]And Newnham was not made but has grown, grown “very naturally” out of the “simple machinery” first designed for it; has “created itself” because these simple elements suggested the way and the means of growth. There is no chapel at Newnham, all sorts and conditions of men have always been found there, and have worshipped God their own way—“not on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem.” Old students sit at its council board, and come up to read in the Long Vacation. Miss Clough governed without rules, in conditions which were not then normal—which were thought indeed to be so abnormal that no company of women could venture to accept them.
If the enthusiasm expended over the two colleges by those who did most for them—the anxiety when things seemed to go wrong, the rejoicing when they went right—be remembered best by those who experienced it, it has had its enduring result in the
GRANTCHESTER MILL This picturesque old mill is on the upper river about two miles from Cambridge, and is a favourite rendezvous of boating parties. The walk from Cambridge to this mill is by ‘Varsity men called the Grantchester Grind’. The famous Byron’s Pool is just below the mill.GRANTCHESTER MILLThis picturesque old mill is on the upper river about two miles from Cambridge, and is a favourite rendezvous of boating parties. The walk from Cambridge to this mill is by ‘Varsity men called the Grantchester Grind’. The famous Byron’s Pool is just below the mill.
movement itself. For nothing great is born without enthusiasm, and this was one of the greatest movements of the century. The lecturers—those “trained and practised teachers” who as an original prospectus declared “were willing to extend the sphere of their instruction“—took no fees, or returned them for several years as a donation to Newnham. Miss Clough not only took no stipend as Principal but helped the college with money; Dr. and Mrs. Sidgwick, in addition to financial help of every kind, gave up their home in Chesterton and lived in three rooms at the “North Hall” of which Mrs. Sidgwick became vice-principal; and here Miss Helen Gladstone, Gladstone’s unmarried daughter, acted as her secretary. Miss M. G. Kennedy has been honorary secretary of the college since 1875, Mrs. Bonham-Carter its honorary treasurer and Mr. Hudson its honorary auditor. It may fairly be said of Newnham also, that it is partly the outcome of the enthusiastic loyalty of its first students, who have since taken so large a share in its welfare.[479]
The “Graces” of 1881.
In the Lent term of 1881 there happened the greatest event in the history of the women’s university movement. Three “Graces” were proposed to the Senate (a) should women be entitled to examination in the triposes (b) to a certificate of the place won(c) to the insertion of their names, after that of the men, in all tripos lists, with a specification of the corresponding place attained by them in the men’s list? On the eve of the day fixed for the vote—February 24th—the vicar of Little S. Mary’s church and a Mr. Potts announced that they wouldnon-placetthe ‘graces,’ and as the day dawned some believed that their recruits would swamp the vote. On the same evening Mr. John Hollond, late M.P. for Brighton, was differently engaged in the House of Commons getting members to promise to share in a special train which was to take them to the university by two o’clock to record their votes, and get them back to their places by four when there was to be an important division in the House.[480]The students of Girton and Newnham crowded the roof of the latter college to watch for the pre-arranged signal—a handkerchief tied to the whip of a student who rode along the “Backs” from the Senate House carrying the news. The vote in favour of the Graces had been 398 to 32, and when it was declared the venerable Dr. Kennedy, the distinguished headmaster of Shrewsbury school and at that time Regius Professor of Greek,[481]waved his cap under the eyes of the vice-chancellor like any schoolboy. The loyal friends now came hurrying up to Newnham, one by one, Henry Sidgwick, Miss Emily Davies, Professor Cayley (first president of the College Council) Mr. Archer-Hind, Mr. (now Dr.) J. N. Keynes, and received an ovation from those whosebattles they had fought to such a successful issue: and if one of the seniors of the university became a boy in his delight, another Johnian[482]did not fail to cover himself with glory by his verses in imitation of Macaulay’s Lay of Horatius, in which “Father Varius” and his friends hold the bridge against progress:
Then out spake Father VariusNo craven heart was his:‘To pollmen and to wranglersDeath comes but once, I wis.And how can man live better,Or die with more renown,Than fighting against ProgressFor the rights of cap and gown?’
Then out spake Father VariusNo craven heart was his:‘To pollmen and to wranglersDeath comes but once, I wis.And how can man live better,Or die with more renown,Than fighting against ProgressFor the rights of cap and gown?’
Then out spake Father VariusNo craven heart was his:‘To pollmen and to wranglersDeath comes but once, I wis.And how can man live better,Or die with more renown,Than fighting against ProgressFor the rights of cap and gown?’
The anniversary has since been kept at Newnhamas “Commemoration” day: and if one touch were needed to complete it it would be found in Miss Clough’s reminder to the students that they commemorate not only what women gained that day, but what the university gave that day. There was an amusing sequel to the vote: the official charged with the preparation of the university certificates consulted a confidential clerk as to the colour of the knot of ribbon which is attached to the university seal—“Don’t you think blue—the university colour?” he hazarded; but was met by the prompt and horrified rejoinder “blue stockings, sir, blue stockings!” So the colour is green.
Social life.
Except under special circumstances the age for admission at Newnham and Girton is 18. Students’ quarters at Newnham consist, in most cases, of a bed-sitting room; at Girton each student has a sitting room with a small bedroom leading from it. The necessary furniture is supplied, and can be supplemented according to taste by the student. All students must be within college boundaries by 7 o’clock (but with permission they can be out till 11) and are “marked in” two or three times a day, the chief occasion being the 7 o’clock “hall.” Girton and Newnham students, if no other lady is to be present, can only visit men’s rooms accompanied by some senior of the college. Visits of men to students’ rooms are not permitted, except in the case of fathers and brothers; but a student cannot ask her brother to her room to meet her college friends, for as Miss Clough observed “the brother of one isnot the brother of all.” Careful supervision with large liberty and an atmosphere which encourages the students to make themselves the trustees of the rules, characterise both colleges; and women students, as Miss Davies has pointed out, carry on their university life without being subject to the proctorial control which is found necessary in the case of men.
In the early days it required some independence of character to encounter the gibes and the wonder which women’s life at the university aroused outside it. People who did not know what a “divided skirt” was, undertook to affirm that all Girtonians wore them: at Newnham some unconventionality in dress was amply concealed by the general dowdiness of the early Newnhamite. The dreaded eccentricities in conduct or clothes would not indeed have killed the movement; and the authorities did not allow this dread to paralyse the quality of mercy, so that there was in fact small justification for the witty suggestion of a Newnham student that “Mrs. Grundy rampant and two Newnham students couchant” would make appropriate armorial bearings for the college. Nevertheless, as a concession to human weakness, smoking was not, and still is not, tolerated.
Both colleges hold debates in the great hall and also inter-collegiate and inter-university debates. Here are some of the subjects discussed: “Is half a loaf better than no bread?” “That we spend too much” (lost). “That the best education offered to our grandmothers was more adequate than that offered by the HighSchools of to-day” (lost). The most important society at Newnham, however, is the Political Debating Society, and the lively and absorbing interest in politics shown nowadays by the college is in striking contrast to the general indifference to politics at Girton. This year (1906) in an inter-university debate (Oxford and Newnham) the motion “That this house approves Chamberlain’s conception of empire” resulted in a ‘draw.’ Most of the students of both colleges are members of the Women’s University Southwark Settlement, to which they subscribe. There is a Sunday Society and two musical societies in addition to the original Choral Society at Newnham, and societies in connexion with each of the triposes take the place of the select “Jabberwock” and “Sunday Reading Society” of earlier days. The great indoor institution at both colleges is the students’ party at 10 p.m. known at Newnham as the “Cocoa.” Two to four is the chief recreation hour, and there are college, inter-collegiate, and inter-university hockey, fives, cricket, tennis, and croquet matches. One of the first conveniences provided at Newnham was its gymnasium, where in the early days of the college a senior moralist might be seen leaping over the back of a student who had just been “ploughed” in the divinity of the “Little-Go,” and a series of reverend seigniors would engage in a hopping match round the room led by the youngest “first year” who was an acknowledged expert in the art.
The public of a generation ago imagined that
MADINGLEY WINDMILL This old ruin is on a hill near Madingley, about four miles from Cambridge. A great sweep of Fen Country is seen in the far distance. The long range of red buildings in the middle distance is Girton College. On a clear day Ely Cathedral can be seen from the left of the windmill.MADINGLEY WINDMILLThis old ruin is on a hill near Madingley, about four miles from Cambridge. A great sweep of Fen Country is seen in the far distance. The long range of red buildings in the middle distance is Girton College. On a clear day Ely Cathedral can be seen from the left of the windmill.
learned women would not marry and that men would specially ‘fight shy’ of taking to wife women who had done the same work as themselves. It may therefore be recorded that the first Newnham student to take a tripos, who was also the first lecturer appointed at Newnham Hall, married the professor of Political Economy, and that they wrote a book on that subject together. That the first classical lecturer at Newnham married a well-known classic and classical tutor of his college (Trinity); that the next Moral Sciences lecturer married the distinguished psychologist who is now professor of Mental Philosophy; that the first historical lecturer, Ellen Wordsworth Crofts, married Darwin’s biologist son Mr. Francis Darwin; and that the first woman to come out senior classic (a Girtonian) married the Master of Trinity College, himself senior classic of his year.
Writing about the proposed Bedford College for women, in 1848, Frederick Denison Maurice had declared that “The least bit of knowledge that is knowledge must be good, and I cannot conceive that a young lady can feel her mind in a more dangerous state than it was because she has gained one truer glimpse into the conditions under which the world in which it has pleased God to place her actually exists.” So “ambitious” a name as “college” for a girls’ academy had a novel sound “to English ears.” To-day the words which excuse and explain its use sound strange and antiquated in ours. Many of the things about which men have fought and borne the heat oflong days will seem incredible to posterity, and the refusal of a ‘college’ or of university education to women will no doubt be among them. No one else, nevertheless, had given to women the opportunity they wanted when Cambridge gave it. Cambridge returned affirmative answers to each request as it was preferred—in 1863, in 1865, in 1870, and in 1880 when in reply to a memorial signed by 8600 persons praying that the Senate would “grant to properly qualified women the right of admission to the examinations for university degrees, and to the degrees conferred according to the result of such examinations,” the Syndicate appointed to consider it returned the memorable answer: “The Syndicate share the desire of the memorialists that the advantage of academic training may be secured to women and that the results of such training may be authoritatively tested and certified.”[483]The irony of history required that this memorial, which led to the granting of the Graces, should be rolled and unrolled over the drawing room carpet of a vice-chancellor known to be hostile to the movement. Forty years after F. D. Maurice had penned the words already quoted women had come out at the head of the list in each of the principal triposes. The most strikinginstance of the misjudgment which it is possible to make about things simply because custom has allowed no one to try them, occurred at the dinner table of friends of the present writer when the late Professor Fawcett, in urging the claims of women to university education, said: “I don’t say that a woman would ever be senior wrangler, but women would take very good places.” His daughter was to be the first senior wrangler: but at no other period of English history would the comparison have been possible by which a parent could test such capacities in his own child. After this it is not surprising that lesser men were unable to gauge the unused powers of half the race; and when one spirited person declared he had no objection whatever to women competing with men but that he considered the air of Cambridge would not be beneficial to them, the argument was as reasonable as any other.
Character and choice of work.
As to the character of the work in which women do best. It had been said that they would not do well in “abstract” subjects. The tripos in which they have taken the highest distinction is the Moral Sciences,[484]where they have been at the top of the list or alone in the First Class five times, provoking Punch’s cartoon in the ‘eighties’ of a girl graduate entering a first class railway carriage marked “For Ladies only.” Their best work has been done in pure mathematics, and, agreeing in this with the men, it is these subjects which they choose for theSecond Part of the tripos. In choice of subject the order is as follows (a) Mathematics (b) Classics (c) History (d) Natural Sciences (e) Languages (f) Moral Sciences. The scale of success has been highest in Moral Sciences, then in (b) Languages (c) Natural Sciences (d) Classics (e) History (f) Mathematics.[485]The classical and mathematical triposes lead to those general tuitional posts for which so many women seek a university education; the languages tripos is easier for those women who go up without the usual school preparation; while the lower places in the history tripos do duty for that “ordinary degree” which is not open to women. It is therefore in the moral and naturalsciences that there is distinct evidence of choice of subject: the proportion of women who take the former is overwhelmingly greater than the proportion of men,[486]and the taste of women for the natural sciences is as marked, a fact which might have been foreseen by those who watched the signs of the times many years ago.
The degree.
The refusal of the degree, of the magic lettersB.A.andM.A., to women, need not be discussed here. That women have the same use for the degree as men is obvious; that it strains their alleged liking for self-sacrifice too far to suggest that they prefer to forgo the legitimate rewards of their work, not less so; and it should not be regarded either as satisfactory or logical that when they do the same work the men only should have the recompense. Dublin university has just offered anad eundemdegree to all women who had qualified themselves for the degree at Cambridge or Oxford—187 have taken theB.A., 121 theM.A., and three have become doctors of letters or science. The credit of this act belongs to the gallant Irishman, and the coffers of Dublin university have thus been enriched, very warrantably, at the expense of the impoverished coffers of Cambridge which sent the far larger number of graduates.[487]
We have moved step by step from the cautious recommendation of the university that the names of the young girls examined for the Local Examination should not appear, and that no class lists should be published (1865) and the informal examination for the triposes, when for nine years (until 1881) the examiners in the classical tripos “objected to state” what class had been attained, to the present state of things when all the “publicity and intrusion” dreaded forty years back in the case of little girls being examined somewhere privately in the same town as little boys, is annually given to hundreds of women in the highest examination in the country in the midst of the university. There had been prophets who opined that under these circumstances Cambridge would be deserted by the other sex. Visions of the halls of Trinity and John’s empty and forsaken, while Girton and Newnham poured forth a ceaseless flow of undergraduates disturbed the sleep of these prophets and seemed worth putting on record in their waking moments. No sooner were the Local Examinations opened to girls in 1865 than the number of boys entered rose from 629 to 1217;[488]and the largest entry of undergraduates on record was that of this present year 1906-7. What has happened? Has a robuster generation of undergraduates arisen, or were theundergraduates of the “seventies” and “eighties” simply maligned?
The status of women students at Cambridge and Oxford.
As between the two ancient universities Cambridge remains the pioneer in the education of women. The examinations are open to women at Oxford, but the same restrictions as to preliminaries and residence are not imposed.[489]It is, however, by the restrictions imposed that Cambridge has established the position of its women students. It has thus bound itself to compare the work of all tripos students irrespective of sex. While at Oxford there is no university recognition of the status of the candidate or of her hall, and no university certificate of the place obtained, Girton and Newnham are recognised colleges at Cambridge; the name of the successful candidate followed by that of the college is read aloud in the Senate House and published on the Senate House door; and only students presented by these colleges are admitted to the university examinations, as is the case with men. Girton and Newnham each owe something to the other. Newnham to Girton in the collegiate status now enjoyed by both,Girton to Newnham because the considerable advantages accruing to women students through proximity to Cambridge have been reflected on the sister college. Each displayed a boldness distinctively its own which has been the main source of the success of the movement: Newnham planted her house of students in the university town, Girton asked to follow the same curriculum as men; and these two things have had a mutually favourable reaction ever since.
chr.= chancellor,v.-c.= vice-chancellor,proc.= proctor (of the university),M.= master (of a college),abp.= archbishop,bp.= bishop.
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,R,S,T,U,V,W,Y,Z