Walking on the Grass, Dancing in the Corridors: Newnham at 150

Walking on the Grass, Dancing in the Corridors: Newnham at 150 contains a smörgåsbord from the whole Newnham community: fellows, alumnae, students, staff, and visitors alike. Journals, drawings, photographs, door notepads, interviews and recently discovered archival material will capture something of the whole experience of being at Newnham.

To accompany these personal stories Gill Sutherland, former Vice-Principal of Newnham and an authority on nineteenth- and twentieth century education, contributes an introduction which offers an overarching narrative of Newnham's importance since the College was founded.

This collection of individual stories charts not only the history of women's education in Cambridge but also presents a close portrait of a College by those who have lived and worked there. Dance down the corridor of this anthology and help us to ignite the 150th year by celebrating the whole community of Newnham in all its variety.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Editions
• Release date: Oct 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781782838227

Book preview

A room of one’s own …

It is often asked, ‘Why should women leave home?’ ‘Is not home Education best for them?’ and these questions deserve a careful answer. A little reflection will, I think, shew how much more effectually & with how much less mental strain, a woman can study, where all the arrangements of the house are made to suit the hours of study, where she can have undisturbed possession of one room, – and where she can have access to any books that she may need. How very rarely, – if ever, – these advantages can be secured in any home we all know, and it is surely worth some sacrifice on the part of parents to obtain them for their daughters at the age when they are best fitted to profit by them to the utmost.

*

From an address by Anne Jemima Clough, first Principal of Newnham, to a group of supporters in Yorkshire, September 1875

Social life in the first decade

On Wednesday went by invitation to lunch at Mr Wright’s rooms Christ’s Coll. Miss Clough, Miss Simcox, & Miss Kennedy, the floral [sic] Science person who was here on a visit went also. At Mr W’s were ‘Smith’, a Dr Martin, who was very nice & an unknown whose name I did not hear; it was very pleasant; we had a grand lunch & went to walk in the gardens …

I think the next gaiety was yesterday …

We drove to the river in a wagonette, some of the party walking & got very good places; the races were great fun; we saw several ‘bumps’ while on the towing path at the other side of the river an excited shouting crowd of men were running alongside, encouraging the boats of their several Colleges …

I am going to a C.U.M.S. Concert on Tuesday afternoon.

Monday 8.45 am I shall have to cut this letter short, for Miss Clough asked me down for a small party last night …

Yesterday Miss Clough & 6 students, I among them, went to lunch at the rooms of a Mr Munro, a Fellow of Trinity. The good man asked her to bring 12!

This has been a great day. I have seen George Eliot and Mr Lewes!!!!! They are staying at Mr Sidgwick’s, this morning Miss Clough told me they wd be coming between 3.30 and 4 to see the house, that we must be on the watch to see her. So some went to the rooms that are generally chosen … and I and others posted ourselves in the library. After being in Miss Clough’s room a little time the awful moment came and the Great One was shown into the library by Miss Paley & Miss Smith. She made a gracious bow and we all rose. After walking a few minutes round the room she left it. She is very remarkable looking and looked extremely benevolent. I liked her very much. Afterwards funny little Mr Lewes came to see the library and held a long and amusing conversation about the books with Miss Crofts. He is very short, has long hair and a long gray head and is very plain and not attractive looking. The result of the talk was that a list of all the books wanted was to be sent to him and he wd see if he had them in his library.

I saw George Eliot several times again passing backwards and forwards. She had some talk with them in Miss Paley’s and the other rooms.

She wore a rather curious shaped bonnet very much forward in her head, a large white flowing cloak and a dark dress. Am I not lucky!

*

From letters written to her mother and sister 1875–76 by Mary Hutton (NC 1875)

A year at Newnham

The resources of Hebe Holman’s family allowed her to come to Newnham for only one year, 1885–86. This was not uncommon in these early years. Afterwards, equipped with a strong reference from Helen Gladstone, Hebe worked as a private governess for six months, then secured a post as an Assistant Mistress at Bury St Edmunds High School in 1887. Some of her diary entries from her year at Newnham and then recording her first visit back suggest some enduring continuities in student life.

[October 1885]

Friday. In reading room – lecture by Miss Gardner on constitutional history – write letter & go out with Miss Macaulay in aft. & gather rushes from brickfield – where we are told we are trespassing but bring home a large bundle with which decorate room. Have tea & go with Miss Badham & Miss Bebbington to service at King’s. After dinner dancing – all S. Hall people come over. Invited by Miss Tooke to tea. Very cosy party. Miss Fortey, Miss Moore, Miss Rix. Miss Hervey comes in later. Very excitable – people must dance. At 10. p.m go to a cocoa party at Miss Bebbington’s stay till 11 when becomes illegal – rather noisy – Miss Field, Miss Paull, Miss Moore, Badham, Crawford.

Saturday. Do history paper. It should have been taken to Miss Gardner yesterday. go to tea with Miss Grosvenor at 3. read in the library. take paper over after dinner. fire brigade practice in S. Hall. work with Miss Hay and have coffee at 8 & go to cocoa with Miss Tongue at 10. Miss Gladstone out so no sewing. should have come to Miss Tongue’s cocoa but not returned in time.

[June 1886]

End of May term very enjoyable.

Go to the boat races twice – once on the river with Mrs Sherlock & once with Edwina, who comes to stay with me from Friday till Sunday.

Go to concert at Pembroke college and also to S. John’s.

First very nice – given in hall – prettily decorated with flowers. get home very late. Miss G. lets us in herself – S. John’s given in the Guildhall – not so nice. Go under Miss Chamberlain’s escort. Mr Sibley comes to speak to Miss Badham.

Go to the boat procession with Mrs … Miss Badham rather glum about modern lang. tripos. After go to tea with some man at Caius with Mrs …

Examination time not quite so nice because do not feel that I am doing well.

Go to supper with Miss Kennedy, Miss Robinson, Miss Gladstone, Miss Ellis, Miss French. After political economy exam.

[April 1887, Easter holidays]

Saturday. Go to Newnham. Paddy meets me at the station. in evening cocoa, Miss Simon, Miss Napier, Miss Garaway, Miss Cox. stay till about 12.

Sunday. King’s in morn with Paddy, Miss Gladstone. Tea with Miss Badham. Supper with Miss Earp. Afterwards read Moore’s poem in Paddy’s room.

Monday. Go to Miss Kennedys in morning – see Miss Clough in the S. Hall – go to tea with Miss Grosvenor in the afternoon – also look at the new hall [the building works which would become Clough Hall ]. Paddy goes to the station with me & just catch train.

*

From the diaries of Hebe Holman (NC 1885)

Learning to speak in public

Innumerable societies of every sort flourished in the college; for debating, for the study of religious subjects, for the reading of poetry or foreign languages, etc. etc. There were two or three small societies for learning to speak, one called the ‘Incapables’ and another ‘Sharp Practice’, where one was called by lot to speak for or against some given subject. Experience in these societies was supposed to prepare one for the formal debates which the whole college and a good many outside friends attended and where taking part was quite an ordeal for young speakers, especially in the new large hall of Clough. Here was also held the ‘Political’ – an imitation parliament – which was of absorbing interest to many of us. Fierce debates took place on Home Rule, which was very much to the fore and had divided the Liberals of the nation into two, and was a burning question to the Irish members of the college. I well remember the honourable member for County Down, in an impassioned speech declaring ‘We will not have the Celt to rule over us’ and an ardent home-ruler got so excited that she ended up her speech at some distance from her proper seat and sat down on the Prime Minister’s lap! As she was wearing a bright red frock she was known henceforth as the ‘scarlet runner’. We learned a great deal about parliamentary procedure and it was an excellent training ground for the world outside. At one General Election later on it was found that no fewer than five of the women candidates had begun their training in politics in this Newnham society.

*

From the unpublished reminiscences of Margaret Tabor (NC 1887), set down at the beginning of the 1950s

Building a library

In the first decade it is uncertain how students got access to the books and papers they needed: regular records begin with the establishment of a Library Committee in 1882. Alice Gardner (NC 1876), College Lecturer from 1884, wrote that ‘the equipment of the College as to books had originally been scanty’. Nor did the early Newnham students have entitlement to use University Library resources, granted only in 1923. Those over twenty-one could make special application to the University Library Syndicate for admission as Cambridge residents, – the earliest example being Ella Bulley, one of the first five students, in 1871. Even then access to read was restricted. Mary Hutton’s breathless account of the visit of George Eliot and G. H. Lewes in 1875 [above, p. 2], gives a tantalising glimpse of approaches made towards potential donors of funds and books to help build a collection in College.

The trigger for more determined, systematic and professional action appears to have been a vote in the University Senate on 24 February 1881, to admit women to examinations and have ‘an authoritative record’ of the results published. Thereafter dedicated library space, operations and collection grew rapidly. A new library, probably located in what is now the MCR in Old Hall, opened in 1883; the Committee reported the purchase of 600 volumes and over 300 donations, with the Council considering a further 200 volumes for purchase. The steady building of the collection continued: 362 volumes were added in 1884, 215 in 1886, 127 in 1889, 406 in 1893, and 289 in 1894.

Ella Bulley’s ticket to use the University Library

Many visitors to and supporters of Newnham donated books or funds – W. E. Gladstone, John Ruskin and Henry Sidgwick; former students; various literary societies. Several donations appear to have been inspired by political affiliation and/or sympathy with Newnham’s project, such as the six books presented by the Central and East of England Society for Women’s Suffrage. A gift of around 600 volumes by women was donated by Mrs Alice Gordon, who had sent the collection to be exhibited at the library in the Women’s Building of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the Exposition, they were returned to the UK, donated to Newnham Library, and placed in the ‘green room’ of Sidgwick Hall. Books were acquired to celebrate Newnham successes too, and the Accessions register records that, in June 1890, ‘about 340 books were presented in honour of Miss Fawcett’s success in the Mathematical Tripos’.

But the generosity of donations was not enough to cover every student’s needs and Newnham’s library functioned as a working library, with a deliberate collection development strategy, from the outset. The Committee aimed to purchase ‘one copy of whatever book is really necessary for students taking any part of the Tripos’. The library was already acquiring books to match Tripos subjects, purchasing volumes ‘recommended by lecturers of the college’. Librarians assessed suppliers, considering in 1895 whether to stick with local booksellers Macmillan or look for London booksellers with better discounts. Additions to individual subject areas were carefully recorded in the registers. In 1888, the Library Committee reported an urgent need to purchase books for students taking Archaeology in the second part of the Classical Tripos, because the library contained ‘none of the books necessary for their work’. The breadth of the collection continued to expand, and new subjects were added to the second Accessions register (1901–13): Economics, Theology, Music, Art, Anthropology, and Books of Special Interest.

Tuğra of Abdulhamid II, 34th Ottoman Sultan, 1876–1909*

These early years coincided with the growing professionalisation of librarianship and its increasing viability as a career for educated women. Library Committee records demonstrate the College’s commitment to a professional service, appointing as librarians, or sub-librarians, several of its own lecturers and former students: Mary Martin and Jane Lee, and Mary Marshall (Paley), another of the five original Newnham students, and Honorary Librarian of the University’s Marshall Economics Library from 1924. It is testament to the library’s standing within College that Katharine Stephen (Librarian 1888–1911) went on to become Principal.

Another Newnham alumna, Constance Black (later Garnett), became Librarian of the People’s Palace in East London in 1888 and wrote about the work. In ‘New Career for Women. Librarians’, she argued that desirable qualities in a librarian extended beyond a wide knowledge of books to ‘a sympathetic tolerance of the never-ending irregularities and mistakes that must be made by young and inexperienced readers; without some stock of patience and sense of humour she will not always be equal to the demands made upon her’.*

However prudent the management, the demand on Newnham’s library resources remained higher than the allocated budget. Termly Committee meetings feature regular applications for more grants. The 1886 report records that initial seed funding had been spent and over-committed and includes a request for a small grant. By 1887, the grant had been received, but the library continued to struggle. This was partly due to the expense of processing the Coutts Trotter bequest of some 2,400 volumes: the Librarian had to employ additional help to assist with transporting books and rearranging the library. In 1889, funds were supplemented by a subscription gift from readers of the Pall Mall Gazette and Women’s Penny Paper, which went towards books otherwise unaffordable. The same year, the Library Committee requested another grant and in 1890, a memorial from the Library Committee made the case for a grant greater than £50 per year, citing an increasing number of students taking a greater number of subjects. By 1893, the grant had increased to £75.

There were frequent petitions for more shelf space and discernment in accepting donations, checked against the current collection to avoid duplication. In 1890 the Library Committee authorised staff to dispose of ‘small unuseful books’. By 1883, there had already been an overflow in the South Lecture Room, and the library consisted of 2,778 volumes, including duplicates kept in North Hall. In 1885, new shelves had to be added, and by 1887, the library was spilling over into the room that had formerly been the Principal’s Office. In 1888, new periodicals were to be ‘kept in the Reading Room of the Old Hall as there is not space for them in the Library’. In 1892, again, the Librarian reported that space was being filled up rapidly; in 1894, additional shelves were again bought. All these books required records as well as storage, and reports suggest the catalogues themselves outrunning the space provided in their card cabinets.

It was not only books that took up space: the library was a popular study space. As early as 1883 it was reported that the library was ‘rarely, if ever, empty during working hours, and in the morning from nine to twelve … usually fully occupied’. The final straw came in 1894, when a gift of several hundred books had to be stored in bookcases hired and locked in some of the lecture rooms, and the Library Committee asked for serious engagement with the question of whether the library ought to be enlarged.

The nettle was grasped by Newnham’s Council. A new library was planned to the design of Basil Champneys, with generous financial support from Council member, Henry Yates Thompson, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the Victorian publisher, George Smith. A bibliophile and noted collector of books and manuscripts, Henry Yates Thompson was ‘very anxious the thing should be well done’. Principal Eleanor Sidgwick, the Yates Thompsons, Basil Champneys, and Librarian Katharine Stephen helped to make an extraordinarily beautiful yet practical library building, opened in 1897 and still in use today. Henry Yates Thompson wrote to persuade the College not to have busts of ‘six ladies (neither Queens nor novelists) to represent literature in the library’ but instead to have six lockable glazed cupboards to ‘hold I suspect all the books you are like to warrant such accommodation for’. He gave some magnificent volumes from his own collection to house in these lockable, glazed cupboards, some of them printed by the eminent early European printers represented by the plasterwork emblems decorating the library ceiling.

In parallel, women were becoming established in library work. By 1911 the journal Librarian (and Book World) was running a regular column, ‘Women’s Work in Libraries’, in which Margaret Reed analysed recent advertisements for jobs in public libraries and argued for equal pay, alongside advertisements for professional courses and correspondence classes charting the development of librarianship into a taught discipline.

Donations of books, as well as careful purchases, meant that Newnham’s library kept growing. When the shelves were full ten years after the opening of the Yates Thompson library building, a new wing was built to the same design and opened in 1907. The tone of the guide printed to celebrate that 1907 opening is confident and celebratory, in marked contrast to the mention of ‘scanty’ provision in the College’s earlier years. A standard of living appropriate to a serious College library had been established.

*

Deborah Hodder, Fellow Librarian (1992– ) and Eve Lacey, Senior Library Assistant (2015– )

* A tuğra was a sultan’s calligraphic signature, used as a seal on all official documents. This nineteenth-century document was part of the founding bequest to the Skilliter centre from Susan Skilliter (NC 1951), University Lecturer in Turkish, 1965–85. The centre, now housed in its own purpose-built quarters at Newnham, includes Ottoman material and rare books from the early sixteenth century on, and a large collection of travel accounts.

* The Queen, the Lady’s Newspaper, 23 February 1889, p. 235

Philippa Fawcett

Of my many friends … first and foremost was Philippa Fawcett, who came up at the same time as myself and at once became one of my best friends. She was already known to be very good at mathematics and great hopes were entertained of her distinction in the Tripos. One of the best Cambridge coaches, Dr Hobson of Christ’s, began to teach her. As he came to Newnham for this, another student and I were also his pupils for two years. I am afraid we did not altogether appreciate what was considered a great privilege; he never succeeded in making me work more than was absolutely necessary. Three years of advanced mathematics, even if one’s chosen subject, can become boring, and the amount of ‘book-work’ one has to remember wearisome; one went to work murmuring: –

Against the Tripos day, which is not long

Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song

The Mathematical Tripos in those days consisted of Parts 1 and 2. Part 1 consisted of 6 days of 6 hours each, divided in two by a break of a few days. The second 3 days were spoiled for me by one of Cambridge’s heat waves, unbearably stuffy and thundery, and I, as my custom was, ‘Turned green’ and had to leave one of the papers after the first hour. So when the lists came out I was not surprised to find myself no higher than the top of the Junior Optimes, the old name of the third class. But all the disappointment at this result was counter-balanced by the achievement of Philippa Fawcett in being placed ‘Above the Senior Wrangler’. Never shall I forget the scene in the Senate House when the announcement was made. Rumours were abroad and the crowds were enormous; cheers drowned out all the names that followed the first. When Miss Clough, with Philippa on her arm, left the Senate House the shouts were taken up outside: it must have seemed indeed a crowning glory to the work of her life. Fast runners took the good news to the Post Office to telegraph Mrs Fawcett, who had not felt able to face the excitement, and to Newnham where the news was anxiously awaited. No telephone then, no bicycles even to help us. Wild enthusiasm followed at the college; bells rang, gongs sounded, a huge bonfire was prepared for a great celebration. We all dined together that night, Mr Hobson and Mrs Fawcett on either side of the Principal, and afterwards we all danced round the bonfire till we dropped with fatigue. The undergraduates from Selwyn climbed the railings and joined in the fun, no one taking any notice of such very unusual proceedings.

… The day of sad farewells came at last. My departure was cheered by an adventurous walking tour in Norway with Philippa and our friend, Theresa Lawrence. We were all very young and indefatigable. We studied Norwegian before we left, even having some lessons in London. … Philippa was also one of the party who planned to go round the world in 1899, and she and Thena Clough stayed with Frank [brother] and me at Jaunpur just before he had typhoid fever and frustrated my plans for going further with them. A few years later I stayed with Philippa in Pretoria where she had an education post after the Boer War. We met on Suffrage processions and at Newnham gatherings and dined together on the fortieth anniversary of our friendship. We celebrated the fiftieth by a motoring tour of Cornwall. I drove her in my car to Fowey and from there we explored the county. We stayed on the way back with old college friends who lived en route in Somerset and Oxford. Philippa’s letters to me when arranging the tour ended with the initials H.P. – Hitler Permitting – for it was the year of Munich.

*

From the unpublished reminiscences of Margaret Tabor (NC 1887) set down at the beginning of the 1950s

Anne Jemima Clough dies in Newnham, 27 February 1892

The two or three times she spoke to me about dying in her gay way, the way she looked up at me smiling with her eyes very brown and bright & said, ‘It doesn’t matter you know’ & then the last night I can’t forget when nurse said ‘Now Miss Clough you must try & be quiet & get some sleep’ & she said so very touchingly ‘I will try’ & I was down on the floor by the bed holding her hand & I kissed it quickly when she said that & she gave her little laugh again – I’m glad she knew it. Then at the end, the end when she was so tired her head couldn’t rest & she moved it always to the side for something to lean against & I put my face there for it to lean against her nice dear white hair – I think that was a faint comfort for a moment – Then came that bit of time not very long while I was kneeling there frightened, very frightened lest before the end there should be more breathlessness, more distress, frightened for her, frightened to see her die. I was over on her right side nurse on the other sometimes fanning sometimes chafing her hands. Edith [Sharpley] lower down that other side & her breath began to come slower & slower she all the time with her eyes very bright looking out of the window. I could hear Edith crying quite quietly. I was watching her too hard to cry & it came slower and slower & at last it didn’t come again & we laid her