Queen's College

“ The boy, who is to be a soldier—one day he hears a distant bugle: at once he knows. A second glimpses a bellying sail: straightway the ocean path beckons to him. A third discovers a college and towards its kindly lamp of learning turns young eyes that have been kindled and will stay kindled to the end.”—James Lane Allen.
The opening of Queen’s College marked a great advance in the cause of girls’ and women’s education. It had its root in the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, which was founded for the purpose of helping governesses in times of need. ”

“ In 1882 a large part of the scientific teaching, hitherto done by special professors in Queen's College, was taken over by Mason College, and in 1892 the whole medical department was removed to the same institution under an order from the Court of Chancery. This change helped to advance the Birmingham Medical School to a position of high repute. The theological students of Queen's College are extremely few. The idea of developing Queen's College into a university had long existed. ”

“ When we look out upon the English world around us, we see that the relation of our College to the female education now going forward, is a very different one from that in which it stood to the same education in 1848. So great an advance has been made in lines independent of Queen's College. ”

“ But success in an examination, as proved by marks or a certificate, is of the nature of an honorary prize, and Queen's College has not moved so high above the earth as to disdain examinations. The College was established and incorporated, "for the general education of ladies, and for granting certificates of knowledge." We have given, and continue to give, certificates to those who are proved by examination to be entitled to them. The general work of the pupils during the year is tested at the end of the Easter Term by Cambridge Examiners. ”

“ Women were now willing to fit themselves for life independently of marriage, and for this end were seeking intellectual development. Therefore the founders of Queen’s College planned that the education should be general, and not merely an initiation into a craft which a governess might learn as if she were a member of a certain guild. ”

“ Queen's College is fortunate in the possession of an excellent staff. Of the English staff, apart from the headmaster, there are three trained certificated masters, the remainder are graduates of universities—three from Cambridge, two from Trinity College, Dublin, one from Oxford, and one from Aberdeen. The senior Chinese masters leave nothing to be desired, and most of the junior are satisfactory. The native masters are trained under the charge of a normal master. ”

“ A generation, I believe, commonly means thirty years; and our College was established just thirty-one years ago. In looking back to its commencement, therefore, we are surveying a generation's progress; and we are justified in taking the establishment of Queen's College as the beginning of an epoch. The scheme of the College itself, the Lectures in which that scheme was expounded, and the actual teaching begun in the year 1848, presented to the public mind of this country an ideal of female education which was recognised as new and bold. ”

“ And, gentlemen, I have one other cause for feeling a fellowship with you, and that is, that I had the advantage for sometime of being a student at a Scottish university, and in very much I trace points of resemblance between the system of your university and that which obtained at home, and especially in this that, although founded by a Scotchman, this institution of Queen's College is one absolutely free and open to every denomination. ”

“ Secondary education is provided in Georgetown at some private establishments, and for boys at Queen’s College, an undenominational government institution where the course of instruction is the same as at a public school in England, and the boys are prepared for the Cambridge local examinations, on the result of which annually depend the Guiana scholarship—open to boys and girls, and carrying a university or professional training in England—and two scholarships at Queen’s College. ”

“ Just behind Queen’s College is the General Assembly’s Theological Seminary, founded in 1853 to train men for the Presbyterian pulpit. It occupies a massive building of red sandstone that is simple and severe. Across the way from Queen’s is a Methodist college with two hundred and fifty students, the building being after the same general plan as Queen’s. ”

“ While increasing care has been taken with the training of the ministry, lay education has not been neglected. Kingswood School, founded by Wesley, continues, as in his day, to give excellent instruction to ministers' sons. In 1837 a Methodist school, Wesley College, was opened at Sheffield, and a few years later one at Taunton, well known as Queen's College. ”

“ Thus, in the charter of Edward III., we even read that “to the University a multitude of nobles, gentry, strangers and others continually flock”; and towards the end of the century we find Henry of Monmouth, afterwards Henry V., as a young man, a sojourner at Queen’s College. But it was in the next century that colleges were provided, not for the poor, but for the noble. Many colleges, too, which had been originally intended for the poor, opened their gates to the rich, not as fellows or foundation students, but as simple lodgers, such as monasteries might have received in a former age. ”

“ Margaret of Anjou, his wife, founded Queen’s College, 1448, at the same time that John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, built Jesus College; Robert Woodlarke, Catherine Hall; Margaret of Richmond, mother of King Henry VII., Christ’s and St. John’s Colleges, about 1506; Thomas Audley, Chancellor of England, Magdalen College, much increased since both in buildings and revenue by Christopher Wray, Lord Chief Justice; and the most potent King Henry VIII. erected Trinity College for religion and polite letters—in its chapel is the tomb of Dr. Whitacre, with an inscription in gold letters upon marble ”

“ Absurd panic at Dunham lest I should be a ‘governess’! Awful phantom!”
It is difficult for girl students of the present day to imagine all that was meant by the opening of Queen’s College in 1858. The plan of establishing a college for women had been much discussed by Alfred Tennyson, Charles Kingsley, and others; and the work had been warmly taken up by Frederick Denison Maurice, E. H. Plumptre (afterwards Dean of Wells) and R. C. Trench (afterwards Archbishop of Dublin) , all three of whom were represented on the teaching staff. ”

“ And we cannot do better, I believe, for our younger pupils than in seeking to establish a higher training for their seniors. It is a proved fact in education, that care for the higher and more advanced training draws up and benefits the lower at the same time. I like to think of a happy period of some twelve or more years spent under the fostering tuition of Queen's College. A child may come to us at eight years of age, or even earlier, into a school which our Cambridge Examiner of last year pronounced to be doing as well as a school could do. ”

“ Graduates are a very small minority of the men of England, and yet their education has determined the education of the great majority who are not graduates. It is by no means obvious that it would do women any harm to know enough for the B.A. (London) pass-examination. They are already expected to learn not much less at Queen's College, in Harley Street; and a degree would be to women, in their present stage of cultivation, what honours are to men. ”

“ Recalling the old days in this way takes one back to one’s youth. Queen’s College opened a new life to me, I mean intellectually. To come in contact with the minds of such men was indeed delightful, and it was a new experience to me and to most of the women who were fortunate enough to become students.... Believe me, as always, yours affectionately and admiringly,
Frances M. Buss.’
In reply to some questions from Miss Beale in answer to the above, Miss Buss wrote again on January 17, 1889:—
‘The day classes were of course attended by girls and women from outside. ”

“ It is difficult to draw a line between colleges and schools; but at Queen's College, certainly, whilst the methods of teaching have had in view students of more advanced years, the great majority of the actual pupils have been of schoolgirl age. I therefore mention here the creation of public girls' schools, such are becoming daily more numerous and more important. ”

“ I need not say that there was nothing revolutionary in the manner in which the claim was affirmed by Professor Maurice and his colleagues; they were men of outspoken loyalty to the Church and the State, and rejoiced to be allowed to put their new College under the auspices of the Queen and of the Bishop of London—names which still honour our prospectus. But a College for women, seeking to stand side by side with King's College, and offering instruction of the same class, was far in advance of anything that had been done or even projected in that day. ”

“ In theory, "hall" and "college" have much in common; one Cambridge college indeed has retained the name of "hall," and two of the women's colleges in Oxford have preferred to keep the old style. In practice, their difference lies in the two facts that colleges are wealthier, with more endowments, and that they are self-governing, with Fellows who co-opt to vacancies in their own body and elect their head. St. Edmund Hall has its head appointed by the fellows of Queen's, with which institution it has long been connected. ”

“ The income is derived largely from landed estates. Its library of one hundred and thirty thousand volumes grows rapidly, for the University is one of the five that has the right to a copy of every volume published in the United Kingdom. The number of students, usually about two thousand, is diminished somewhat by the new Queen’s University, founded by Victoria in 1850, which grants degrees to the graduates from the Queen’s Colleges at Belfast, Galway, and Cork. ”

“ But the truth of it is there are too many old women at the head of the Universities. What you want are keen-headed men, men of experience in the world, who would move with the times, and get Oxford and Cambridge to move with them. I am so convinced I am right in this opinion, that if it were not for the cares of business, to which I must return when I have finished with Cambridge, I should apply for a Trinity fellowship after I have taken my degree, and try to infuse a little spirit into the counsels of the college and through it into the University. ”

“ You are doubly rewarded, for not merely is Cambridge a perfect specimen of a colonial village, but in Harvard there breathes the true spirit of humane letters. Nor is the college a creation of yesterday. It is not far short of three centuries ago that John Harvard, once of Emmanuel College in England, endowed the university which bears his honoured name. The bequest was a poor £780, with 260 books, but it was sufficient to ensure an amiable immortality, and to bestow a just cause of pride upon the mother-college. ”

“ While the University is thus only a union of the Colleges for attaining such ends and such status as can better be attained by united than by isolated existence, the College is a real and concrete thing, the foundation stone of the ‘Oxford System’. Each College is within itself independent; each has its own traditions and some characteristics of organization, life, and system which are peculiar to itself. With the affairs of the College individually the University is not concerned. ”

“ In these days, when education is so much thought of, and when meetings in every part of the kingdom are continually taking place for the purpose of getting still higher standards of education, it is naturally difficult for institutions of old date to keep up with the times; but I do not think or fear that this college will have any reason to fear competition from others, as it already stands as one of the second or third great educational colleges in the kingdom. ”

“ In this great foundation then the three characteristic features of a college are found—a common life, powers of self-government, with the right of choosing future members, and endowments that enable religion and learning to flourish, free from more pressing cares. It is these features which distinguish the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and which have determined their history. ”

“ Kings, queens and bishops, interested in learning, established first one college and then another, so that by the thirteenth century Oxford ranked with the most important universities in Europe; and then, as education extended to other professions, the colleges widened their courses of study, and the government, while still ecclesiastical in form, became broad and liberal. The colleges have large endowments, plenty of money, and Oxford and Cambridge have educated most of the great men of England in the last 500 years. ”

“ The University of London, however, was intended to promote the education, not only of gentlemen, and of persons who could afford to live for several years at a college, but of all classes of her Majesty's subjects, without any distinction whatever ”

“ The characteristic peculiar to Cambridge and Oxford, and which distinguishes them not only from American but also from all other universities in England and elsewhere, is the college system. Thus Cambridge is a collection of eighteen colleges which, though nominally united to form one institution, are really distinct, inasmuch as each is a separate community with its own buildings and grounds, its own resident students, its own lecturers, and Fellows—a community which is supported by its own moneys without aid from the university exchequer, and which in most matters legislates for itself. ”