Miss Constance Maynard occupied a unique position in relation to
women's education in the last half-century. She was in at the birth of St. Leonard's, the infancy of Girton, and helped to found Westfield College, of which she was Principal for over thirty years. A strong Evangelical, she made Westfield a definitely religious institution, markedly different in atmosphere from most other women's colleges. The impress of her personality was on it throughout, and in the twenty years since she retired it remained always her foremost interest in life, for she kept touch with a vast circle of her old students by the agency of " ring letters." The mistress herself and some twenty students contri- buted letters about their activities to a budget which went the rounds of the whole ring, each member as she received it withdrawing her old letter and adding a new one. The strain on Miss Maynard herself, who had some ten or a dozen of such rings to keep going, must have been considerable, but she made it all a
Previous page
