My mother, Agnès Catherine Plumbe (1876 - 1954) was the eldest of ten children. She was named Agnes after Dickens' heroine because her father read David Copperfield aloud to her mother while they awaited her birth.
As a child, she was a mix of intelligent bookworm and tomboy. She loved reading above all else. One day, when she was very little, she was scolded because she entertained a little guest by giving him a book to read and then retreating into a corner herself with a book. As she grew older and proved to be "good with babies", she was asked – too much perhaps – to help with the sisters and brothers who kept arriving. Later in life, she expressed some resentment that the younger members of the family, especially Gwyneth, had so much less responsibility and so much more fun. There was, however, ample domestic help in this large house, and I sometimes think that the mother took care of the children herself simply because she loved babies so much.
By the time she reached adolescence, it was recognized that she had a penchant for studies, and her parents sympathized with her wish to continue her studies at Cambridge after leaving school. She wanted to study medicine but her father didn't want to hear about it; the idea of women doctors disgusted him. It was the mid-90s of the last century, a time when only relatively wealthy and courageous girls went to university and many Victorian fathers felt the same way my grandfather did about women in medicine.
So Mum took a botany course at Girton. This must have seemed like a second-rate form of science to study, and it explains the fact that she rarely showed much interest in the subject later in her life. I remember her identifying roadside flowers for us children on country walks, and having beautifully illustrated books of wildflowers that she treasured, but rarely opened. The years at Cambridge were nevertheless happy for her with the birth of lasting friendships:
Study and ease mixed together: sweet recreation,
And the innocence that pleases best,
with meditation.
It’s truly innocence! Cocoa nights in college halls were the level of dissipation my mother and her friends allowed themselves – or were allowed by their superiors – and they seemed perfectly content to keep it that way.
At this time, Oxford and Cambridge, while admitting women to their studies, did not award them degrees. The mother passed the exams needed to obtain a degree, but she was old enough before the rules were changed and she was able to write B.A. (Cantab) after her name.