Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 3 (of 4).—1874-1892Graves, Charles L. (Charles Larcom)
History
Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 3 (of 4).—1874-1892
Graves, Charles L. (Charles Larcom)
Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901 -- Humor
Her sense of duty is remarkable, and appalling. She virtuously accepts
the onerous office of secretary to innumerable societies. Countless
notices, in her bold and clear handwriting, may be seen day after
day upon the College notice-boards, some of them of a sufficiently
pathetic character. "Will the following members be so very good as to
pay their subscriptions due the _term before last_ to the 'Society
for promoting Masculine Intelligence'?" She does not even resent her
appointment as sub-officer of the Fire Brigade, the duties of which
position involve a constant personal supervision of two or three
repulsively oily little hand-engines, which she tends and lubricates
with loving care, till she has reduced her hands and face to the
colour of the brown holland apron which enshrouds the rest of her
person. Not even the horrors of an alarm practice can daunt her,
though she may just have settled herself to revel for an hour in the
pleasant byways of Professor Sidgwick's _Ethics_, when screams of
"Fire!" rushing footsteps, and an alarm-rattle, such as heralds a
bump in the May races, compel her to leave her books, and fly to the
Hall. Then the canvas buckets must be produced, her corps arranged in
alphabetical order, and marched off to the supposed scene of action.
All this she does in an incredibly short time; and when, at the
discretion of the head captain, the pumping of engines and passing of
buckets is allowed to stop, she returns to her work with fortitude and
resignation past belief.
[Illustration: HONOUR TO AGNETA FRANCES RAMSAY!
(Cambridge, June, 1887)]
Yet in spite of her multifarious and strenuous activities the Girton
Girl is not inhuman or immune to the appeal of her less serious-minded
fellow students, and the sketch ends with a really charming portrait
of a witty, incorrigibly frivolous, generously hospitable and
irresistibly popular member of the college. At once critical, judicial,
and genial, the study is a little masterpiece of its kind. The verses,
published some months earlier, on a young Spanish lady who took her
doctor's degree at Barcelona at the age of nineteen, are appropriately
cast in Swinburne's "Dolores" stanza (as that was her Christian name)
with the refrain, "Our M.D. of Spain," but are not remarkable either
as a parody or an appreciation. Much happier in every way is the
well-known picture of Miss Ramsay (afterwards Mrs. Montagu Butler)
entering a first-class carriage "For Ladies Only" on the occasion
of her being placed Senior Classic in 1887, an exploit which caused
_Punch_ once more to raise his voice on behalf of the bestowal of
degrees on women.
An even more remarkable success was achieved by Miss Philippa Fawcett,
who in 1890 was declared to be "above the Senior Wrangler," and
_Punch_, in "Topping the Tripos, or Something like a Score for the
Sex," while congratulating the daughter, did not forget her father,
always one of his heroes:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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