With the extension of 1902, the College attained to something approaching its full stature. Miss Davies aimed at 200 students; 160 were now secured, and the kitchens and dining hall were on such a scale as to make it possible to add rooms for more students when funds would allow. But the process of growth had been a difficult one, and the economies which had been necessary were a serious hindrance to developments other than building. Equipment was kept at the lowest possible level; the library and laboratories were greatly in need of expansion; and there were no endowments for Fellowships or for research work. Miss Davies, in her eagerness to open the doors of Girton to as large a number of students as possible, had always set her face against giving up rooms to research students, and was not very willing even to encourage students to stay on for a fourth year.

Research meanwhile was coming to occupy a more and more important position in the University. While the College was struggling into existence, profound changes were, as we have seen, being brought about at Cambridge.

It is difficult nowadays to realize the immense obstacles which confronted the would-be founders of a College for women in 1866. To collect money and to organize a College is a difficult task at any time; in those days it was made almost impossible for women by the solid antagonism of public opinion. The alliance between Miss Davies and Madame Bodichon proved remarkably suitable for the attack on this powerful fortress; their qualities were just such as to supplement each other. Miss Davies, as we have seen, had had little in the way of educational opportunities. She was neither a scholar nor a student, and her limitations in this respect made themselves felt after the College had come into being. But she had a genius for organization, and her very advanced views about women being combined with a staunch and even narrow conservatism in other matters formed a combination excellently well suited to the task she had in hand, in her dealings with those whom she was wont to call “the enemy”, as well as with those who were merely indifferent or timid. It seemed as though no harm could come, even of such novel ideas, when they were propounded with such skill and propriety by one so orthodox, Madame Bodichon, on the other hand, could never be mistaken for anything but a revolutionary. But she seemed like a being of another order.

“The summer of 1925 finds all Girtonians at I the mercy of very mixed feelings—the sorrow of parting with Miss Phillpotts and the joy of welcoming Miss Major…. Miss Major is an old and much loved friend of the College. We congratulate ourselves that after a long and distinguished career at Blackheath, Putney, and Birmingham, she is willing to return to her own College as Mistress, and we welcome her with every possible good wish.” In such wise was Miss Phillpotts's successor greeted at Girton. An old student of the College, she had had a distinguished career as a teacher, and had since 1911 been Headmistress of King Edward VI School, Birmingham. She entered upon her duties as Mistress of Girton at the moment when the great changes brought about by the Charter were coming into effect, creating new relations between the Mistress and the Council, and a new position for the resident staff of the College. Only a year later, in 1926, relations with the University were also profoundly changed by the Statutes consequent upon the Royal Commission. To Miss Major fell the task of guidance during these critical years of initiation, a task which she was particularly well able to fulfil. Her sound and ready judgment, her wide sympathies, her wit and knowledge of the world, were of the utmost value both within the College and in relation to the University.

This short history of Girton College is based as regards earlier years (Chapters I-V and part of Chapter VI) on my book, Emily Davies and Girton College, published in 1927 by Messrs Constable. For the later chapters I have drawn on the Annual Reports of the College; the Girton Review; letters from Miss Davies and Miss Metcalfe to Madame Bodichon, lent by her nephew, Mr Valentine Leigh Smith; letters to Madame Bodichon from Miss Marks (Mrs Ayrton), lent by her daughter, Mrs Ayrton Gould; and information supplied by the Librarian of Girton, Miss McMorran, and by the Secretary, Miss Clover, and her assistant, Miss Peace: to all of whom I offer my thanks. I must also thank the Mistress of Girton, Miss Jex-Blake, Miss Major, and Miss Bacon, for criticisms and suggestions.

The first five students were Miss Gibson, Miss Lloyd, Miss Lumsden, Miss Woodhead, and Miss Townshend; besides Miss Manning, who was to be there for only one term, and did not intend to take any examination. Miss Gibson has described her reception by Miss Davies, on her first arrival at Hitchin. Before she had time to knock or ring, “the door was opened, and on the threshold there stood the keen little lady to whose courage and energy the whole scheme of a College for women was due, and who was now quivering with excitement, thinly veiled under a business-like manner, in this moment when her cherished hopes were actually beginning to materialize”. Four days later, Miss Davies wrote to her friend Miss Richardson:

My Dear Anna,

We are here. The little band arrived in due succession on Saturday, and we have now had three lectures.… Adelaide [Miss Manning] has just been ejaculating “It is so pleasant to be at the College”, and the students are saying it in their bright faces and in their tones all day. I scarcely expected that they could all have worked together with such entire cordiality and that so small a number could be so “jolly”. Miss Lloyd is most valuable. Being a little older than the others, she makes a link between them and the authorities.

While the great experiment was being carried on at Hitchin, the Examinations for Women established in 1869 had already led to further developments in the direction feared by Miss Davies. In the autumn of that year, Mr Sidgwick, Mrs Fawcett and others took steps to organize lectures for women in Cambridge, in connection with the examinations. The lectures began in the Lent Term of 1870, and had an immediate success, being attended by nearly eighty ladies, residents in Cambridge. Students from a distance were soon attracted by the lectures, and by scholarships offered in connection with the examinations. The lectures were organized on a more permanent basis through the formation of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Cambridge; and it soon became evident that a house of residence for women students was wanted.

Meanwhile the number of students at Hitchin was increasing, and the question of house room had become urgent. The lease of Benslow House was due to expire at Michaelmas, 1872, and it was necessary to decide where the permanent home of the College was to be. Mr Sidgwick, who, as we have seen, was a member of the Cambridge Committee, thought that the College and the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Cambridge might very well join forces in order to provide what they both needed—a house of residence for women students in Cambridge.

The College had now been in existence for six years, and during that time had had no less than four Mistresses. The position of the Mistress and her relations to the students and to the Executive Committee had not been clearly established, and the problems involved had become obscured by Miss Davies's tenure of the two offices of Secretary and Mistress. It was urgently necessary that the whole subject should be thoroughly considered and placed on a stable footing. The Committee, after reviewing the situation, defined the position of the Mistress in such a way as to make her of paramount importance as regards the internal management of the College, while herself remaining outside the governing body. She was to be responsible for all educational arrangements, as well as for discipline and domestic administration. The resident lecturers were to be appointed by the Committee on her nomination. The post was one involving a variety of work and much attention to detail. The duties shared to-day among the Directors of Studies, the Junior Bursar, the Librarian, and other officials were then all performed by the Mistress.

These matters having been settled, the post was advertised, and on June 28th, 1875, Miss M. F. Bernard was appointed.

Apart from punctuation, the text here followed is that of vol. iii. in the ten-volume edition of Locke's “Works” 1812.

1. Introduction.—The last resort a man has recourse to, in the conduct of himself, is his understanding: for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind, and give the supreme command to the will, as to an agent, yet the truth is, the man, who is the agent, determines himself to this or that voluntary action, upon some precedent knowledge, or appearance of knowledge, in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other, which serves him for a reason for what he does: and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and uncontrollable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But in truth, the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all universally pay a ready submission. It is therefore of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding, to conduct it right in the search of knowledge, and in the judgments it makes.

The text here followed is that of the first edition, supplemented by passages from later editions which are historically interesting, or of special educational value at the present time: such passages are enclosed in square brackets. Summaries of insertions in later editions are here printed in italic type. Sections 3-28 deal with the care of health; modern medical opinion does not endorse all their recommendations, and they are therefore represented here by Locke's summary, sections 29, 30. The sections are numbered as in the latest editions, for convenience of reference. It has not been thought advisable to retain the original spelling and punctuation.

Locke's original draft, which extends to sections 1 to 166 only, was acquired by the British Museum in 1913 from a descendant of Edward Clarke. It is Additional MS. 38,771, “Some Directions concerning ye Education of his son sent to his worthy Freind, Mr. Edward Clarke of Chipley, 1684.” The manuscript contains one hundred pages, each measuring 4¼ inches by 3¼ inches. Apologizing for the “disjoynted parts” observable in “these papers,” Locke continues, “I began them before my ramble this sommer about these provinces and thinking it convenient you should have them as soon as might be, I writ severall parts of them as stay gave me leasure and oportunity any where in my journey soe yt [that] great distance of place and time intervening between the severall parts often broke the thread of my thoughts and discourse and therefor you must not wonder if yt they be not well put togeather and yis must be my excuse for ye faults in ye method, order and connection.”

The most general charge brought by its contemporaries against the school-room of the seventeenth century was that it failed to adapt its ideals to the profound changes which were becoming manifest in social life. Throughout Europe the school maintained the cosmopolitan type of instruction which was the natural correlative of the medieval Church and Empire. It ignored, or affected to ignore, the spirit of nationalism which was everywhere manifest; consequently, it taught no modern languages, and made no open and avowed use of modern history, literature, or geography. It admitted grudgingly a little commercial arithmetic amongst its studies, as a concession to the same demand which, at a later date, caused schools to offer teaching in shorthand or typewriting; and this was in the age of Descartes and Isaac Newton. Of modern science, then come to the birth, and of the widespread readiness to carry observation and experiment into the realm of “Nature,” the school took no account.

It is true that the “new philosophy” was not yet sufficiently advanced, elaborated, and systematized to be made an agent of education.