Shorter Notice
Constance Louisa Maynard. By C. B. Firth. (Allen and Unwin. 18s.)
MISS MAYNARD, one of Miss Beale's staff at Cheltenham, one of the founders of St. Leonard's School, St. Andrews, and fifst Mistress of Westfield College in the University of London, unfortunately left voluminous diaries. Her biographer, unfortunately btit inevitably, quotes copiously from them. Inevitably, because Constance Maynard, who had a forceful side to her character, intended that her biography should be written, and intended that her diaries should be the basis of it. The result is the inclusion of a mass of trivialities in which the general reader could have no reason to be interested. It is as a pioneer in women's education that Miss Maynard deserves to be remembered. She was a member of Miss Davies' pre-Girton Girton at Hitchin, and in 1875, at the age of 26, after imbibing the wisdom of Henry Sidgwick, she established a new record in feminine achieve- ment by graduating (or the equivalent) in the Moral Science Tripos, one of her fellow-candidates being Lord Keynes' father, Dr. J. N. Keynes, who still lives miraculously on. Her life-work was the creation of Westfield College, Hampstead, and of this Miss Firth can write with first-hand knowledge. That cannot have made her task altogether easy, for " the Mistress's " limitations were palpable. She was not a great scholar, nor a conspicuously inspiring personality, and her strict evangelicalism—theatre-going was unpardonable and novel-reading not much better, when life/was so short and improving books so numerous—might all too easily create reaction in student; of a more spirited than spiritual type. None the less the college grew and prospered, and Miss Maynard's biographer is justified in closing her volume with the words " In 1935 the work of Constance ended. Westfield College stands." It stands, it might be added, on a rather different basis, under its present Mistress, Mrs. Stocks.
Previous page
