MISS FAWCETT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 37, 13 September 1890, Page 14

MISS FAWCETT.

Miss Philippa Garret Fawcett is one of the most noted women in England at the present time. She has not only dared to enter into intellectual contest with man—an almost sacrilegious thing in England—but she has actually won the fight. On the 3rd June she achieved the unique honour of beating the senior wrangler in the mathematical tripos at Cambridge University. As there is no co-education in Cambridge, Miss Fawcett could not actually become senior wrangler, and must contentherself with having demonstrated that she was superior to him. She was born at Cambridge twenty-two years ago, and is the daughter of the famous blind Postmaster-General of Great Britain. She went to school at the High School of Clapham, but also owed much to the teaching of Miss J. McLeod Smith, of Cambridge. After a course at University College Miss Fawcett went up to Newnham, a famous female college and an adjunct to Cambridge, three years ago with a scholarship. The news of Miss Fawcett’s success naturally caused the greatest excitement at Cambridge. There was a dinner at Newnham, and meanwhile the grounds Jiad been hastily illuminated, some lamps having been improvised into a trophy over the grand door, blazoned the initials ‘P.G.F.’ A bonfire was also got together in the gardens, and a most interesting scene ensued. The Newnham ladies joined hands and danced round the blaze like a ring of witches, singing ‘ For she’s a jolly good fellow ’ over and over. The Sei wyn men—Sei wyn College being just across a nai row lane—crowded against the hedge to watch the rejoicings, and at length, carried away by the contagion of the girls’ enthusiasm, they broke through the hedge and stood on the sacred lawn of Newnham joining in the chorus. There they were, a score or two of them, and some twenty yards away was the ‘fairy ring’ of Newnham students in their white evening dresses, and in the interval was drawn up a human rampart of all the housekeepers and housemaids of Newnham. Miss Fawcett was chaired three times round the bonfire, once in an ordinary chair, which is said to have broken down in the tumult, ami once in a more regal armchair, and finally on the shoulders of her fellow students, who would also have ehaiied Mrs Fawcett, but that lady, though she had hurried to Cambridge radiant with her daughter's triumph, pleaded that the line must be drawn somewhere. Numerous lockets and other firewoiks were let off by the Newnham College servants, to which the Selwyn men answered with as funny squibs as they could muster on such short notice. They also gave cheeis for Newnham and Miss Fawcett, to which the women students responded with cheers for Sei wyn.