Free Bluestockings by Jane Robinson Page A

experiment in a laboratory, for a little stroll along the river, anywhere indeed, without a chaperone she could not do it.
    Naturally enough, these duennas were resented as being staid, strict, interfering, and inconvenient. No doubt many were all of these things, but it could be a thankless task, and those who volunteered were doing the cause of higher education for women a considerable service. Eventually, women undergraduates were trusted enough to manage life by themselves, but it took a good half-century for that to happen.
    No chaperones were required for life in college. There the staff and senior students took their place. As a ‘fresher’, or first-year, Dilys Lloyd Davies was forbidden to go to a college dance at Girton (an all-female affair), but she wrote home breathlessly describing those lovely creatures who were allowed, accompanied by Miss Clough:
    Miss Bettany wore a very pale blue cashmere trimmed with silk, a fan, gold bracelet, snowdrops and heath[er] in her head and dress… Miss Gill, who is about 5 feet nothing wore a white lama [fine woollen fabric] with snowdrops in a chain round the square body and on the elbow sleeves and fan – and in her hair. She looked a regular little doll. I wished I were a man to dance with her… Miss Prideaux, a long and narrer [sic] lady wore a dark green velvet dress; Miss Harrison white silk and gold beads on neck, wrists and head. She is very graceful. Miss Richmond wore pink silk with white crocuses. Miss Clough wore grey slate silk, so pretty. 5
    No wonder Professor Sidgwick was worried that his college would not be taken seriously: the girls, he said, looked far too lovely to be clever.
    Dilys stayed only a year at Newnham. During her first summer term, she was summoned by Miss Buss, who needed a new member of staff at the North London Collegiate and thought Dilys would do. The young Welsh girl was reluctantly forced to accept the post. It is ironic that someone who did so much to promote the university careers of such crowds of young women should be responsible for denying an individual student the same. But Miss Buss was not renowned for her empathy.
    In 1881, the University of Cambridge formally opened its examinations to women, a move welcomed by Girton and Newnham with slightly exasperated gratitude. (The next step would be the granting of a degree to those candidates who passed them.) This may have been a local triumph, but by now Cambridge had relinquished its place at the vanguard of higher education for women, never to regain it. The university itself had never been proactive: it just suffered pioneers like Miss Davies and Miss Clough to fuss about in its shade for a while. London University had a tradition of dissent, however, and in 1878 radically announced that, following the passing of the Enabling Act two yearspreviously, all scholarships, prizes, and degrees (except medicine) would henceforth be open to men and women equally. Soon a dedicated hall of residence was established for those women undergraduates attending University College; others went to Bedford College, now an official part of the university establishment; Constance Maynard set up Westfield College in Hampstead in 1882; Royal Holloway was opened on the outskirts of London in 1886, and was later presided over by Miss Tuke, who wore silver slippers and, naturally enough, azure blue silk stockings. Then there was King’s College for Women in Kensington, with the following also opening their doors in due course to women as well as men: Imperial College (formerly the Royal College of Science), the London School of Economics and Queen Mary College in the East End.
    The first two women’s colleges in Oxford, Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall (LMH), were opened in 1879. As in the Other Place (Cambridge), they were originally homely hostels for ladies keen to attend university lectures, and then developed into what Dorothea Beale of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College described as ‘academic