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Leicester Chronicler tempus
omnia revelat group
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| Two thousand years of Leicester's history | |||
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Listening to
the historic heartbeat of the City of Leicester |
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| This site is part of tempus omnia revelat | ||||
| Design
© Stephen Butt 2005-2009 Text © Deborah McDonald 2006 Images in public domain Revised 09/10/09 |
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| Clare Collett - her Leicester years 1878-1885 | ||||
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The school bell rang out signalling the end of lessons for the day. Clara Collet, who had been teaching at Wyggeston Girls’ School for the previous six years, was looking forward to the evening ahead. William Morris was to give a lecture for the Leicester Secular Society to which Clara had been affiliated through her friendship with the Gimson family. This was despite her being a believer in God herself, albeit as a non-conformist Unitarian. Morris was to give a lecture entitled ‘Art and Socialism’. It was to prove an interesting talk despite his rather dry delivery as he read the paper with little expression. |
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She
was very fond of her life at Leicester. Having
left London at the age of 18, she had been daunted at the
prospect of teaching girls almost the same age
as herself so far from her home.
However, she soon settled down at the
school which was so new it ‘was
in a very unfinished state, especially the lower
rooms, and we were constantly meeting the
workmen in our journeys up and down’.
The curriculum was ‘new’ too. It was to include mainly academic subjects and included callisthenics. At this time it was generally felt that ‘over brain power’ and too much strenuous activity was bad for a woman’s health and many of the parents objected in the beginning to this type of regime. Luckily very few of the new girls suffered as a result and the school soon became very popular both from the students’ and their parents’ perspective! |
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| The
Gimson family had become Clara’s closest
friends in the area.
Josiah Gimson was a successful local
manufacturer of machinery.
Despite being rich he had a
well-developed social conscience and wished to
extend co-operative activities, improve
conditions in |
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| The
reputation of Morris as a great poet and
decorative craftsman, not to mention politician
(he had just been involved in the formation of
the Socialist League), meant that the family
were nervous about entertaining so great a man.
However, they need not have worried.
Sydney
later wrote,
‘Ernest and I went to the station, and, two minutes after his train had come in, we were at home with him and captivated by his personality. His was a delightfully breezy, virile personality. In his conversations, if they touched on subjects which he felt deeply, came little bursts of temper which subsided as quickly as they arose and left no bad feeling behind them.’ He
spent the night with the family and the two
young men sat up until 2 am talking and drinking
with Morris.
Ernest was apprenticed at the time to a
local architect and so he had an especial
interest in Morris’s artistic ventures.
The following year he wrote to Morris
after, ‘much hesitation for fear of
intrusion,’ asking for a letter of
introduction to a As a result Ernest Gimson found a good position and later became arguably the best furniture maker in the Arts and Crafts tradition. |
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| Before
he left Leicester, he pursued Clara Collet and despite being four
years her junior, asked her hand in marriage.
After a great deal of deliberation and
careful thought, Clara turned him down.
She decided that she did not love him and
although he would make an excellent choice of
husband in many ways she was not prepared to
compromise love.
‘It is much better to live an old maid
and get a little “honey” from the short real
friendships I can have with men for whom I
really care myself than to be bound for life to
a man just because he thinks he cares for me.’
In any case, should she marry, she would have to give up her career and although she was by this time becoming dissatisfied with teaching, she certainly did not plan to abandon her plans for marriage. |
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The following year in 1885, Clara decided to leave teaching, return to London and embark upon further education. This she did although, ‘the whole school [was] united in sorrow when she left and thirty of Miss Clara Collet’s girls drove with her to Longcliffe where they had tea’. At
her final assembly she was unable to contain her
tears and was full of trepidation at leaving the
security of her work in
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| The Wyggeston Hospital Girls' School (and sometime City of Leicester Boys' School) in Humberstone Gate pictured here soon after its completion in Clara's time in 1878. It is now the headquarters of Age Concern Leicester. | ![]() |
The school crest (derived from the earlier crests of founder William Wyggeston and the Wyggeston Boys' School). | |
| Clara
Collet 1860-1948: An Educated Working Woman
published by Woburn Press is also available.
This provides full biographical details
of Clara’s life with two chapters covering her
time as a schoolmistress in |
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