The women's colleges at the older Universities are now so well established as to be taken for granted as a necessary part of the national system of education. Their character and aims are so far similar to those of the men's Colleges as to obscure at first sight the fact that they are totally different in origin and history. These differences of course leap to the eye so far as the buildings are concerned; and they must be explained if we are to understand their present character and position.

When Girton College was founded in 1869, the University of Cambridge was still in the midst of that remarkable process of change which was to transform its character in the course of the nineteenth century. With five hundred years of life behind it, it was entering upon a fresh chapter and renewing its vitality, after the stagnant period of the eighteenth century, with its sinecures and its narrow exclusiveness.

The origins of the University can be traced back to the thirteenth century; many of the Colleges date from the Middle Ages, and most of them had come into existence before the Reformation.

The story of the College has been told in outline down to the end of the year 1932. It remains to notice various matters of lesser importance, which for Girtonians may be worthy of record, but cannot conveniently be included in the main story.

An American traveller who visited Girton in 1879 was much impressed by the fact that each student had “a room to herself; in the lower stories, each has two rooms”. The new buildings then in progress, as he remarked, would accommodate nineteen additional students. “This new building is to cost £8000 (40,000 dols.)—a sum for which an American college would have accommodated forty or fifty pupils. But it would have been by crowding them together; and Girton may well forgo elegancies and even comforts for the sake of the health and privacy of its students.” In the first “programme” drawn up by Miss Davies for the College in 1868 she had written:

Each student will have a small sitting room to herself, where she will be free to study undisturbed, and to enjoy at her discretion the companionship of friends of her own choice.

With the resignation of Miss Jex-Blake in 1922, the College entered upon a new period of its history. The retiring Mistress's position in regard to past students was of a character that could not be continued. She was personally acquainted with them all, and had actually been in residence with all except the small number who had left before she entered the College as a Scholar in 1879. Subsequent generations must lose this very special bond, whatever else they gain. Miss Jex-Blake was succeeded by her cousin, Miss Phillpotts (afterwards Dame Bertha Newall), who had entered the College in 1899 as a Pfeiffer Scholar. She held a Pfeiffer Studentship of £50 a year for the years 1903—4 and 1905—6, and served as Librarian from 1906 to 1909. She was therefore well known at Girton. “We feel that you alone could take the place of Miss Jex-Blake”, were the words used by the senior student in welcoming her on behalf of the students at the beginning of her Mistress-ship.

Miss Phillpotts's experiences after resigning the Librarianship at Girton had been of an unusual kind. She spent some years in independent study of the Scandinavian languages, during which she acted as private secretary to Baron Anatole von Hugel, Curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

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.