She constantly exercised a simple diplomacy, not divorced from sympathy--with independent-minded students, with university dons who viewed Newnham with disfavour, and in generally vain attempts to conciliate high theory with prudent practice. It was here that her characteristics sometimes jarred on the early students, among whom were many ardent spirits, people whose presence there at all was the consequence of a struggle _à outrance_ with convention and prejudice; and who resented Miss Clough’s temporising ways, as though the first maker of Newnham were a backslider in the matter of first principles. They thought her indirect and timid. She was neither. She had real courage, not only as her biographer has said “audacity in thought”[466] but audacity in execution. She was staunch and tenacious, and might be found taking an individual’s part against the whole college; and whether the help she gave was moral or financial, no one ever knew of it but herself. Neither did she always prefer the most brilliant or useful student, but would take under her wing the apparently most insignificant. She had no fear of the unusual, though the younger students thought so, and it was “her indifference to abstract principle” which made them sometimes judge that she despised ideals. She had also a singular frankness--a singular directness--when speaking with others face to face; her important things were said at odd moments, odd moments were her opportunities. Neither did she compromise; she went all the way round and came out at the same place. This expedient made it quite unnecessary to override obstacles, and her aphorism “my dear, you must go round” was received with hostile scorn by a student seated on the high horse of abstract considerations. Indeed Miss Clough was not a fighter in the sense that she could neglect the quantity of others’ feelings: and her desire that people should not be offended was part of a sympathy, not of a timidity, which could not be conquered. The working of her mind is shewn in the saying: “If we watch, we may still find a way to escape”--because to her there was no inevitable where her sympathies were engaged. Her diplomacy led her to keep her notions to herself, so that they should not be nipped in the bud by the frost of hostile criticism. “My dear, I did wrong” was the disarming reply to a very young student who asked her “as one woman to another” whether she considered she had been justified in a certain course of action. Her singleness of purpose--the absence of all vanity--a complete disinterestedness, shone on all occasions. Her never failing search after the right course she once tried to express by saying to a student: “You must remember that I try to be just but I don’t always succeed”; and she criticised the performance with complete detachment from the personal equation.[467]