A Victorian Educational Pioneer’s Evangelicalism, Leadership, and Love: Maynard’s Mistakes

172 Pages·2022·4.717 MB·English

by  Pauline A. Phipps

A Victorian Educational
Pioneer’s Evangelicalism,
Leadership, and Love
Maynard’s Mistakes
Pauline A. Phipps
A Victorian Educational Pioneer’s Evangelicalism,
Leadership, and Love
Pauline A. Phipps
A Victorian
Educational Pioneer’s
Evangelicalism,
Leadership, and Love
Maynard’s Mistakes
Pauline A. Phipps
University of Windsor
Windsor, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-031-13998-7 ISBN 978-3-031-13999-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13999-4
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For Alan
A
cknowledgments
For the twenty-year archival journey that shaped and inspired this book, I
first thank Dr. Deborah Gorham, my doctoral adviser in History at
Carleton University, Ottawa, who encouraged my research into the rela-
tively unknown English educational pioneer, Constance Louisa Maynard
(1849–1935). My doctoral dissertation translated into my published
biography, Constance Maynard’s Passions: Religion, Sexuality, and an
English Educational Pioneer 1849–1935 (2015), which analyzes how faith
shaped Maynard’s crucial role in women’s higher learning and passions for
key loves in her life. In comparison, this new book emerges from my dis-
covery of sensational new facts in the archive about Maynard’s behavior as
an educator, patriotic visionary, and pioneer student of psychology.
Indeed, the unveiling of extraordinary micro-historical events caused by
Maynard offers readers a rare window into a past subject’s mindset. For
example, how Maynard’s bizarre longings for her student lover ruined the
student’s well-being and initial academic career. Yet Maynard’s “mistakes”
also provide new insight into Victorian concerns that, astonishingly, per-
tain to our current moment.
Certainly, serendipity in the archive inspires historians to ask new ques-
tions, and sometimes, revise former interpretations of the past. For this, I
am grateful to former Queen Mary University of London archivist Anselm
Nye, and Honorary archivist and historian Dr. Janet Sondheimer, who
first introduced me to Maynard’s numerous publications and unpublished
diaries, autobiography, journals, and correspondence. Additional archival
information in this book has been collected over the years from Girton
College Cambridge, Bedford College London, the University of St.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Andrews Library Scotland, and Royal Holloway College London. In
recent years, Queen Mary University of London Archive officers, Lorraine
Screene and Florence Dall, have directed me towards the handwritten
Council of Westfield Minutes and Maynard’s newsletter, from which I
discovered new information. They also made available many of the archi-
val photographs in this book.
The invaluable contributions of research assistants Callum Murgu,
Amanda Alchin, Matthew McLaughlin, and Alexander Cramer were
helped by funding from the University of Windsor’s Outstanding Scholar
program and the Department of History. I also thank the four anonymous
reviewers for helpful comments and individuals including Emily Russell,
commission editor for history at Palgrave Macmillan, Tryphena R., project
coordinator at Palgrave Macmillan, and Sugapriya Jaganathan, project
manager at Palgrave Macmillan for their interest in this project and hard
work in bringing it to publication. Last, my husband, Alan, has had
patience and love over our many years together. My daughter and son, Dr.
Kelly Phipps and Dr. Gregory Phipps, respectively, also have academic
careers and publishing records that with their unique personalities are
sources of pride for me.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Longing “for Excitement of Feeling,” 1849–1871 23
3 Evangelical Prophet at Girton, 1872–1875 47
4 Difficult Relations, 1882–1891 73
5 Colonial Affairs, 1897–1904 99
6 “Noisy Rabble of Our Fears,” 1917–1934 127
Bibliography 153
Index 161
ix
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 1.1 Constance Maynard aged thirty- eight, ca. 1888, with Bible
in hand. Courtesy of Queen Mary University of London
Archives/Westfield College/WFD. Reference WFD/25/1/1. 3
Fig. 1.2 Discarded page from Maynard’s autobiography, written in
1915. Courtesy of the Queen Mary University of London
Archives/Westfield College/WFD. Reference CLM/6/3/1.
Notice the X in the margin and lines through comments at the
top of page 341 that Maynard now possibly thought
discriminatory. She had referred to Girton students R. Aitkin
and M. A. Kingsland “as the first drops of the shower that ha[d]
brought to so low a level of the refinement of … Women’s
Colleges.” They had attended the new public middle-class girls’
“Grammar (high) Schools” before Girton rather
than the elite (upper-class) private boarding schools for girls.  14
Fig. 2.1 Constance Maynard’s green book, 1869, page number 12 and
13. Courtesy of Queen Mary University of London Archives/
Westfield College/CLM. Reference CLM/1/5. Writing at age
nineteen, we glean Maynard’s upbringing and conflicts. The
first paragraph on page 12 concludes that “faith and prayer are
really stronger than sin [worldliness], because Christ is stronger
than Satan.” The bottom of page 12 and the top of page 13
then ruminate upon a former Belstead student named Edith,
and her sister Fanny, whose “evil” love of dancing, parties, and
the theatre were encouraged by their “weak” parents. Fanny
had died that autumn, and now apparently, Edith wondered “if
Fanny would have done just as she did, had she known her end
was near.” 35
xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 3.1 (Left) Groups of early Hitchin students, ca. 1870. Louisa
Lumsden is seated to the far right and Rachel Cook
is seated next to her, with pioneers Emily Townsend, Isabel
Gibson, and Anna Lloyd standing behind them. Lumsden and
Cook were among the first women to complete studies in the
Classics. Courtesy of St. Leonards School Archives, St.
Andrews. (Right) Groups of early Hitchin students, ca. 1873.
Amy Mantle, who would form a relationship with Maynard at
Girton in 1874, is standing in the middle of the back row.
Courtesy of St. Leonards School Archives, St. Andrews. 52
Fig. 3.2 Constance Maynard at Girton with fellow members of the
Girton Bible meeting, ca. 1874. Maynard is seated on the
left-hand side with her arm around Amy Mantle. Courtesy of
Queen Mary University of London Archives/Westfield
College/WFD. Reference WFD/25/ 1/1/1. 62
Fig. 4.1 External view of the back garden at Maresfield Terrace with the
Westfield College group, 1889. Courtesy of Queen Mary
University of London Archives: Westfield College. Reference
WFD/25/3/4. This image of Westfield’s “annual garden
party” examples how middle-class college women negotiated
femininity with the masculine corporate. As Constance Maynard
as Mistress pours tea, her resident staff members, Anne
Richardson, and Mabel Beloe, seem prominent in the BA
academic dress as graduates of the University of London.
Maynard was denied the gown and cap because she completed
her studies at Oxbridge. 80
Fig. 4.2 External view of Kidderpore, the white neo-Classical stucco
mansion to the far right, which became the “second” Westfield
in 1891. Courtesy of Queen Mary University of London
Archives/Westfield College/WFD. Reference WFD/25/3/1. 88
Fig. 4.3 Westfield College (at Kidderpore), 1894, showing the group of
forty eight students and three lecturers. Maynard, who
particularly disliked Westfield’s “secularist” ionic columns, is
seated in the middle of the first row wearing her white lace cap.
Courtesy of Queen Mary University of London Archives/
Westfield College/WFD. Reference WFD/25/3/1. 89
Fig. 4.4 Early Westfield College Group, 1885, at Maresfield Terrace, at
full capacity with eighteen students, three Resident staff
members, and Maynard, aged thirty-six, who is center of the
second row. Kate Tristram is to Maynard’s left, and staff
member Frances Gray is to her right with a book on her lap.