About the following year my Mother decided to send me to Girton and in order to prepare for college I went to live with my sister in London and to attend lectures at University College, Gower Street. These lectures had only just been started as an experiment in higher education for women. I went to those on Constitutional History and Literature. The attempt to add Latin and mathematics to the scheme failed for lack of attendance.

I also had the great good fortune of getting lessons in Greek from Miss Cook (Mrs C. P. Scott) who had just passed out triumphantly in the First Class of the Classical Tripos at Cambridge. She with Miss Lumsden and Miss Woodhead, (the Girton Pioneers) were the first women to pass the examinations for honours at Cambridge. Afterwards when I was at Girton I read some Greek with Miss Lumsden, a privilege for which I have always been most grateful.

In October 1874 I went to Girton and for three happy years I worked at Physiology, Comparative Anatomy and Chemistry under such distinguished teachers as Sir Michael Foster, Mr. Francis Balfour and Prof. Dewar. We early students were particularly fortunate in that it was only the most eminent and enlightened lecturers at Cambridge who opened their classes to women. In December 1878 I went up for the examination for the Natural Science Tripos and got a second class; and for two years afterwards I held the post of Science Mistress at the college, having the charge of the new chemical laboratory which Lady Stanley had just given. In addition to superintending the work of the chemical students I also taught elementary mathematics to some students who came up wholly unprepared for taking the mathematics in the Little Go Exam. I mention this because it has been said that I was Mathematical Mistress at Girton which is not true.

My connection as teacher with the college came to an end in 1881, when I married and thereafter I became entirely absorbed in my husband's interests which centred in the West Indian Colonies. Another cause which further detached me from my old fellow students was that I was utterly out of sympathy with the Women's Suffrage movement. Even in my first year at Girton I had refused to sign a petition which was going round the college on the ground that I had too little knowledge of politics to pledge myself to support the movement. Later I became genuinely convinced that the agitation for the vote was premature and based on insufficient evidence that women would use it for the benefit of the country. I used to ask my suffragist friends whether they exercised their votes for local bodies or sought election on Boards of Guardians, etc, in order to prove that they could do useful public work but the idea was generally received with scorn. The splendid work which was done by women during the war has of course entirely altered the aspect of the question.

Little of interest for the world outside my family remains to be told.

In conclusion, omitted here, Constance wrote that she lost her husband and her only son during the World War I, and moved back to the house in Slough with her two unmarried sisters to devote herself to arrange records of astronomical studies and observations and many other fields her parents and her grand parents had left. She mentioned that her work was finally published from Cambridge as "the Herschel Chronicle" and ended the note with a sentence: "This is an achievement of my life."

Quoted from Newsletter Issue No 60 (January 1994) and No 61 (March 1994)