Note 463 — Chapter VI · GIRTON AND NEWNHAM

It may be recorded here that Madame Bodichon’s scheme was for a college (a) in Cambridge (b) with the same intellectual conditions and tests as applied to men and (c) free of denominationalism. A chapel was not erected at Girton till after 1895. Of Mme. Bodichon as a pioneer it has been said that she had the singular faculty for realising in her imagination exactly what she wanted, down to the last detail—the creative power. Her failing health for the last fourteen years of her life made impossible the active share in the work which had been so ungrudgingly undertaken by her between 1867 and 1877; but her interest extended to every student who went up to Girton, and she was at pains to know them and to find out from their conversation how the college might be improved.