A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
CAMBRIDGE in one week has won the rugger match, won the soccer match and decided to admit women to full membership of degrees. All of which leaves the balance heavily weighted in favour of Oxford, which gave women full degrees decades ago. At Cam- bridge the struggle has been severe and long. It was in 1868 that Henry Sidgwick, indomitable pioneer in everything concerning women's education at Cambridge, had written "I am involved in a project for improving female education: by providing examinations for governesses." Out of that Newnham sprang ; Girton had arrived (from Hitchin) two years earlier, in 1873. But if that means that there were women students in and about Cambridge, it gave them no degrees and no membership of the University, still less any part in its government. Exactly fifty years ago, in 1897, the historic battle for that was fought, and lost so decisively that for years there was tittle inclination to renew the fight. Fifty years earlier still, in 1847, Tennyson, perhaps with his own university in mind, had written hope- fully in The Princess of "sweet girl graduates in their golden hair." If his prevision had been a little clearer he would have spoken (regardless of metre) of "sweet girl titularies to degrees." However, that all belongs to the past, or soon will. From the beginning of the next academic year women will be capable of holding any position in the university except that of proctor or esquire bedell—a discrimina- tion which is likely to agitate them little. And like Oxford women students they will be entitled—perhaps required—to wear gowns, if in these hard days they can find anything to make them of.
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