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Title: Dorothea Beale: Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies' College, 1858-1906

Author: Elizabeth Helen Shillito

Release date: December 21, 2022 [eBook #69599]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920

Credits: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOROTHEA BEALE: PRINCIPAL OF THE CHELTENHAM LADIES' COLLEGE, 1858-1906 ***





                     [Illustration: DOROTHEA BEALE

                   FROM A PAINTING BY J. J. SHANNON

                            _Frontispiece_]




                         PIONEERS OF PROGRESS
                                 WOMEN

                       EDITED BY ETHEL M. BARTON


                            DOROTHEA BEALE

                  PRINCIPAL OF THE CHELTENHAM LADIES’
                                COLLEGE

                               1858-1906


                         _WITH TWO PORTRAITS_

                                  BY
                  ELIZABETH H. SHILLITO, B.A. (LOND.)


                                LONDON
                         SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
                          CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
                    NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                 1920

 “Some there are who go forth to their own life-work with the holy
 hands of the dead who live laid on their hearts, who feel that they
 have a debt to repay, who see a ray of life from afar cast upon all
 they do, and bear about for ever a light within, which they must pass
 on for the sake of the dead who live.”

                                                         EDWARD THRING.




  Great Souls who sail uncharted seas,
    Battling with hostile winds and tide,--
  Strong hands that forged forbidden keys,
    And left the door behind them wide.

  Diggers for gold where most had failed,
    Smiling at deeds that brought them Fame,--
  Lighters of lamps that have not failed--
    Lend us your oil, and share your flame.




                                  TO

                         DR. ELSIE MAUD INGLIS

                       WHOSE CRIMEA WAS SERBIA,

                        BUT WHOSE POST-WAR WORK
                          IS IN ANOTHER WORLD




                         SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS.


  CHAPTER I.

                                                                    PAGE

  Discoveries and enterprises of the Nineteenth Century--Effect on the
  educational world--Girls’ education in age of Elizabeth and in
  Nineteenth Century--Protests against the latter--Pioneers of
  higher education--Our indebtedness to them                           1


  CHAPTER II.

  Dorothea Beale--Parentage--Mrs. Cornwallis and her daughter--Their
  influence on Dorothea Beale--Home life--Early education--School
  life--Time of self-education--Attitude to games--Reading
  in early life--Euclid--School in France--Some personal
  characteristics--Religious and other influences of home              4


  CHAPTER III.

  History of Queen’s College--Early students--Rev. F. D. Maurice--His
  opening address--Dorothea Beale’s attitude to teaching--Study
  and friendship at Queen’s College--Appointment
  there--Difficulties--Resignation--Impetuosity of nature--Some
  inherent difficulties of women’s life                               10


  CHAPTER IV.

  Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton--Hasty acceptance of post
  there--Beautiful situation of school--Evils--Personal
  difficulties--Mr. Beale’s letters--Dorothea Beale’s dress and
  appearance--Thoughts of resignation--Father’s advice--Appeal to
  committee--Suspicions of High Church tendencies--Determination
  to resign--Notice from committee--Acknowledged indebtedness
  to the school--Appreciation--Work at home--History of England
  begun--Spartan habits--Some philanthropic work--Offer
  of service--Dawning conviction of real vocation--Her diary
  begun--Extracts--Time of waiting--Religious life and beliefs        16


  CHAPTER V.

  Cheltenham Ladies’ College--Early history--The first
  Principals--Advertisement for new Principal--Dorothea Beale
  candidate--Tributes to character and ability--Alleged High Church
  tendencies--Declaration of belief--Time of anxiety--Appointment as
  Principal--Work at Ladies’ College--Personal appearance at this
  time--Rule of silence--Precarious financial position of
  school--Practice of economy--Question of renewing lease of Cambray
  House--Mr. Brancker--His wise policy and administration--Some
  reminiscences--The Fight against ignorance and prejudice--Dorothea
  Beale’s inspiring leadership                                        27


  CHAPTER VI.

  Blue Book Report on condition of girls’ education--Dorothea Beale’s
  evidence and theories with regard to women as teachers; effects
  of higher education on health; idleness and health; the teaching
  of music--Modern ideas on the teaching of this subject              38


  CHAPTER VII.

  Rearrangement of school hours at the Ladies’ College--Opposition
  met and overcome--Gradual breaking down of prejudice--Gossip
  and disloyalty--Dorothea Beale’s gift of inspiring
  loyalty--Miss Belcher--Death of Dorothea Beale’s father--How
  she spent holidays--Singleness of aim--Idea of Sisterhood of
  Teachers--Expansion of Cheltenham College--Opposition to a
  new building--Dr. Jex Blake’s plea--Farewell to Cambray
  House--Continued growth--College incorporated under Companies’
  Acts--Boarding houses made an intrinsic part of
  College--Defining of Principal’s powers--Cambray House again        43


  CHAPTER VIII.

  Cheltenham College magazine started--Dorothea Beale, editor--Her
  “silver wedding”--“Old Girls’” Gift--Scheme of Guild
  put forward and carried out--Emblem--Opening address--Dorothea
  Beale’s remembrance of former pupils--Miss Newman’s
  work--Continued after her death--St. Hilda’s, Oxford--St.
  Hilda’s, East London--Dorothea Beale’s attitude to charitable
  enterprises                                                         51


  CHAPTER IX.

  A time of darkness--Effect on outlook and character--Some general
  interests--Freshness of outlook--Pundita Ramabai--Interest in
  Indian widows--Women policemen--Balfour’s Education Act,
  1902--Attitude to prizes--John Ruskin and the Ladies’ College--Paris
  Exhibitions--Another Royal Commission on Education--Visits
  of Empress Frederick and Princess Henry of Battenberg
  to College--Epidemic of smallpox--Dorothea Beale and
  vaccination--Personal honours--Officier d’Académie Française, Tutor
  in Letters of Durham University, Corresponding member of
  National Education Association, U.S.A., Freedom of Borough
  of Cheltenham, LL.D. Edinburgh--Robes presented by staff--Three
  weeks’ tour--A brief interval of ill-health--Story of the
  Shannon portrait--College Jubilee celebrations                      58


  CHAPTER X.

  Greatness of personality--Varied gifts--Prodigious power of
  work--Great organising capacity--Organisation of the Ladies’
  College--Advice to teachers--Her sense of humour--The tricycle learnt
  at 67--Her extreme sensitiveness--Power of sympathy--Her
  outlook that of a religious poet--Her Scripture lessons--Her
  views on marriage--Tribute of the Bishop of Stepney                 70


  CHAPTER XI.

  Signs of the end--The last Guild meeting--The last term--A journey
  to London--The doctor’s verdict--Operation--Waiting the call--A
  morning of suspense--Laid to rest--Tributes to her
  character and work                                                  75


  CHAPTER XII.

  The modern world--The need of work--Power of education--Supreme
  importance of home training--Responsibility of parents--Teaching
  as a vocation--Personal fitness--Different kinds of
  teaching--Elementary schools--Boarding schools--Demands of
  the work--Its joys and advantages--The need of devoted teachers     79




                               PREFACE.


I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to all who have helped me
in the writing of this short biography: especially to Mrs. Raikes for
her kind permission to use her “Life of Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham,”
without which this book could not have been written; also for her
most generous help in many difficulties: and to Messrs. Constable,
the publishers, for their kind consent. It is impossible to name all
who have so willingly helped me, but I should like to mention Miss A.
M. Andrews of Cheltenham; Lieut-Colonel J. F. Tarrant for his help in
many ways; Mr. J. J. Shannon for kindly allowing a reproduction of Miss
Beale’s portrait; Messrs. Martyn of Cheltenham for their photograph;
“The Times,” Messrs. Macmillan, and other publishers, who have
permitted me to quote extracts from works which are still copyright.

  E. H. S.




                              CHAPTER I.

                             INTRODUCTORY.

              “Tho’ they to-day are passed
  They marched in that procession where is no first or last.”

                                                       --AUSTIN DOBSON.


The story of the nineteenth century is one of wonder: a story with
Romance written large on every page. It is a tale of great discovery
and enterprise in almost every sphere. Under the influence of its
discoveries, material life became transformed and new mental and
spiritual horizons appeared. The newly-acquired knowledge of forces
like steam and electricity opened up to the world undreamed-of
possibilities. Scientists at home and in distant places of the earth
discovered truths that did much to reveal God’s ways to men. In the
world of medicine new theories were applied to take from operations
their dread, and fatality from many diseases. In literature it was a
time of great riches: an age equal to any, not excepting the great
Elizabethan; an age of prophets and seers, of men and women expressing
in singleness of heart the truth as it was revealed to them. And those
of us who already live at some distance can hardly imagine a time when
Scott and Dickens, Browning and Tennyson, Ruskin and Carlyle, George
Eliot and Charlotte Brontë will not be held in high esteem by those who
love the great, the true, and the beautiful in literature.

Springing out of these discoveries and revelations there naturally
arose a demand that the mind of man generally should be prepared
to enjoy this new world. Dissatisfaction with existing methods of
education began to be felt; and humble people who were unable to read
and write began to ask that they and their children should be taught.

The education of girls at this time was particularly unsatisfactory,
though it had not always been so. In the age of Elizabeth, for example,
girls of the higher classes had received an excellent education. It was
customary then for girls to learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and as Mrs.
Stopes points out in her interesting book on “Sixteenth Century Women
Students,” the number of really learned women was very great. I do not
know when these ideals of education gave way to lower ones, but readers
of Addison will remember that one of his aims in his _Spectator_
essays was to rescue women from the utter frivolity and emptiness of
their lives. How scathing he is in his description of the way in which
ladies killed time! when the buying of a ribbon was held to be a good
morning’s work!

In the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign, the education of girls
was indeed deplorable. An excessive amount of time was given to
accomplishments and to the study of deportment; the instruction
consisted, for the most part, of a smattering of many subjects: and the
whole process of education was shallow and superficial. If the women of
that day developed--as many did--force of character and of intellect,
it was rather in spite of their education than because of it. Numbers
of girls rose in revolt against this mental and spiritual starvation:
some managed to become well-educated without any outside help, but to a
great number this system meant either an utterly frivolous or extremely
dull grown-up life.

Many were the voices raised in protest against this lack of education.
And as one reads the literature of this time one is greatly struck by
the number of men who pleaded for a different régime: not only leaders
of thought, like Tennyson and Ruskin, but ordinary men of the educated
classes. Perhaps as lookers on they saw most of the game, and into
their souls there entered a deep bitterness that those who might count
for so much counted for so little.

But although men by their writings and speeches and actual help in
teaching, did much, it was on women that the real burden of this work
was to fall. Neither sex can fully educate, though it may teach the
other. In the main, the education of boys must be carried on by men;
and the education of girls by women. It would be impossible to give a
list of all the women who dedicated their powers to this work; who in
a very real sense gave their lives that those after them might live.
This little book is devoted to the story of one of the pioneers of
educational work, and is necessarily limited to the part that Dorothea
Beale played in this great enterprise. But Miss Beale, great as she
was, was only one of many. Whilst she was working out her ideals at
Cheltenham, other women in other schools and colleges were working
out theirs: Frances Buss at the North London Collegiate, Emily Davies
at Girton, Anne Clough at Newnham, Mrs. Reid at Bedford, Miss Pipe of
Laleham, and many others. Nor is it possible to say which of these did
the most important work. For we are dealing with that which cannot be
measured,--the things of the mind and spirit.

Those of us who came late enough to enjoy some of the fruits of their
work, can only acknowledge our deep sense of gratitude to this noble
army of women who did so much. If the gates of knowledge are open to
us, it was their hand which turned the key: if we can enter nearly
every field of service, it was their feet which beat the track. If we
hold in our hands a lamp that makes many of the dark places bright, it
was they who kindled it and passed it on to us.

The part we must play is no passive one. If the lamp is to be kept
burning, it must be fed by the oil of our devotion and our service.




                              CHAPTER II.

                      LIFE AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL.

 “The pilgrim’s discovery is when he looks into his own heart and finds
 a picture of a city there. The pilgrim’s life is a journeying along
 the roads of the world seeking to find the city which corresponds to
 that picture.”--STEPHEN GRAHAM.


Dorothea Beale, who was born on March 21, 1831, was fortunate in her
parentage and early environment. Her father, Miles Beale, was a surgeon
who had been trained at Guy’s Hospital. He came of a family of literary
traditions, and he himself was a man of wide interests and learning.
Her mother, Dorothea Margaret Complin, was of Huguenot extraction and
belonged to a family distinguished for its ability, counting among its
members several “advanced” women. Mrs. Beale’s aunt, Mrs. Cornwallis,
the wife of a rector of Wittersham, Kent, was a woman of considerable
intellect and great spiritual gifts. She wrote several books of a
devotional character. One of these, “Preparation for the Lord’s
Supper with a Companion to the Altar,” contains much excellent advice
to ladies on the use and abuse of speech, the regulation of time,
indolence, desire of admiration, sickness, etc., breathing a devout
and earnest spirit, and revealing in the writer an attitude of great
severity towards herself. This little book, with its old-fashioned
appearance, seemed to me, as I read it, full of the spirit which
animated Mrs. Cornwallis’s celebrated great-niece.

Her daughter, Caroline Frances Cornwallis, was a remarkable woman. Her
published letters are extremely interesting, and deal with a variety of
subjects, Italy, Education, Religion, Science, Philosophy. She wrote a
number of books in the series called “Small Books on Great Subjects”.
These were published anonymously, and were considered to be the work of
a man, at a time when the known authorship of a woman would have damned
any book. Miss Cornwallis often used to laugh up her sleeve at the
appreciation of critics who would undoubtedly have criticised her work
unfavourably had they known it was that of a woman. She had a frail
body, a courageous mind, and a devout spirit. At times she adopted a
cynical attitude towards men’s low estimate of the intellectual powers
of her sex. “Every man, you know, thinks he has a prescriptive right to
be better informed than a woman, unless he has science enough to see
that the said woman is up with him and therefore must know something.”
This was, however, just a strain of bitterness bred in a brilliant,
active mind handicapped by lack of facilities for real education, and
restricted on every side by the bounds of custom and prejudice.

These two women undoubtedly influenced the future head of Cheltenham.
Mrs. Beale’s sister, Elizabeth Complin, had lived for some time with
the Cornwallises and was the medium through whom the young Beales came
into contact with their ideas and ideals.

Dorothea Beale was also fortunate in being one of a large family. The
spirit of the home seems to have been one of love and service. There
was also a strong intellectual atmosphere, in which the children learnt
early to love the best in literature. Her father would often read aloud
to his children extracts from Shakespeare and other great writers,
and from him and her mother Dorothea began early to imbibe a love
of learning, and to find in literature some revelation of the great
spiritual realities.

Dorothea’s education and that of the older members of the family was
at first under the guidance of a governess. It must have been quite
early in life that she received her first inkling of the incompetence
of teachers of that day. She remembered a rapid succession of teachers
whom Mrs. Beale was compelled to dismiss on account of their inability
to teach. There appears to have been only one satisfactory governess, a
Miss Wright, who was excellent: after she left, the girls were sent to
school.

“It was a school,” says Dorothea Beale in her autobiography,
“considered much above the average for sound instruction: our
mistresses were women who had read and thought: they had taken pains
to arrange various schemes of knowledge: yet what miserable teaching
we had in many subjects: history was learned by committing to memory
little manuals, rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles
were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces
of literature, we repeated week by week the Lamentations of King
Hezekiah, the pretty, but somewhat weak, ‘Mother’s Picture’ of Cowper,
and worse doggerel verses on the solar system.”

At the age of thirteen Dorothea was obliged to leave school on account
of ill-health. She always considered this a fortunate circumstance as
it enabled her to carry on her own education. No doubt a good deal of
time was lost in following the circuitous routes of all self-educators,
but the grit, determination, and power to overcome difficulties thereby
developed, probably more than compensated for this. Libraries, notably
those of the London Institute and Crosby Hall, at this time supplied
her with many good books. The Medical Book Club circulated some books
of general interest. She and her sisters were also able to attend
excellent lectures given at the Literary Institution, Crosby Hall, and
at the Gresham Institute.

“Miss Beale never learned to play,” said Mrs. Raikes in a speech on
Foundress’ Day at the College after the beloved Principal had passed
away. “During her girlhood there was no hockey, tennis, net-ball,
swimming or other healthy exercise for girls; and Dorothea and her
sisters were thrown back for their pleasure on the joys of the mind.
Not only did Dorothea Beale never play herself, but she could never
quite see the need for other people to play. The playgrounds, etc.,
which perforce grew up round Cheltenham Ladies’ College, were always
rather a stumbling-block to her, though she was wise enough to be led
by those who were more in touch in this respect with the spirit of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

“Her reading always inclined to the solid type, and in her girlhood she
came across few novels.

“Her love of reading was never allowed to dissipate itself on
trivialities, and here she had a great advantage over girls of to-day,
for the ephemeral literature of this age--the endless magazines and
short stories--did not exist to tempt and gradually to fritter away a
good literary taste.”

She was at this time very much interested in the life of Pascal who,
prevented by his father from acquiring a knowledge of mathematics,
discovered for himself the truths of Euclid. Perhaps, as Mrs. Raikes
suggests, it was Pascal’s example which inspired her to work through
the first six books of Euclid by herself. She plodded steadily through
the fifth book, not knowing that even at that time a few simple
algebraic principles were substituted for Euclid’s rather laborious
methods. To Dorothea Beale, as to many boys and girls, mathematics came
as a wonderful revelation; they opened up to her developing mind a new
world. In her subsequent work as a teacher she seems to have been able
to hand on to her pupils something of the thrill and wonder that she
herself experienced in these early days.

In the year 1847 Dorothea was sent with two elder sisters to a Mrs.
Bray’s school for English girls in the Champs Elysées. This school is
perhaps best described in Miss Beale’s own words in the “History of
Cheltenham Ladies’ College”.

“I was myself for a few months, in 1848, pupil in a school that was
considered grand and expensive. Mrs. Trimmer’s was the English History
used in the highest classes. We were taught to perform conjuring tricks
with the globe by which we obtained answers to problems without one
principle being made intelligible. We were even compelled to learn from
Lindley Murray lists of prepositions that we might be saved the trouble
of thinking.”

She was glad, however, in later life of this and similar experiences.
It gave her some idea of the enemies of education she had to fight. It
made her realise how great was the need for the thorough training and
education of teachers and how little could be accomplished without it.

In 1848 Mrs. Bray’s school came to an untimely end through the
Revolution of that year and Dorothea returned home at the age of
seventeen. Those who knew her at that time described her as “a grave
and quiet girl, with a sweet serious expression and deliberate speech:
also with a sunshiny smile and merry laugh on occasion. She was
remarkable, even in a studious, sedentary family, for her love of
reading and study.” According to one authority she was quite beautiful
as a girl. One evening she and her sister Eliza went to a dance,
Dorothea looking very lovely in a beautiful white dress. Eliza was
dancing with a young man, who asked the name of that beautiful girl.
“Oh!” said Eliza, delighted that he should admire Dorothea, “she’s my
sister. Do you think she’s like me?”--“Good gracious, no!” blurted out
the tactless young man. Eliza Beale used to tell this story with great
zest, fully enjoying the reflection on her own looks.

In one part of her autobiography Dorothea Beale speaks of the
influences of her early life.

“An aunt, my godmother, lived with us, and was often my friend in my
childish troubles.... The strongest influence [on my inner life] was
that of my sister Eliza. We were constantly together. She had a very
lively imagination, and on most nights would tell me stories that she
had invented. Early in the mornings she would transform our bedroom
into some wild magic scene and we would play at Alexander the Great
and ride Pegasus on the foot of our four-post bedstead.”

Already she had begun to show some of the characteristics which were
so marked in later life, her devotion to duty, her keen intellectual
interests. She was prepared for Confirmation, in 1847, by the Rev.
Charles Mackenzie, to whose teaching Dorothea felt she owed much. Of
early religious influences and experiences she thus speaks in her MS.
autobiography.

“There was the faith of my parents, the morning and evening prayer.
There was the Bible picture-book and the Sunday lessons. The church
we went to was an old one, St. Helen’s, and at the entrance were the
words: ‘This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate
of Heaven’. There were high pews and the service was almost a duet
between clergyman and clerk, yet I realised, even more than I ever have
in the most beautiful cathedral and perfect services, that the Lord was
in that place, even as Jacob realised in the desert what he had failed
to find at home.”

Religion with her was never allowed to be simply an affair of the
emotions: it meant obedience, discipline, the rigid performance of
duty, but it was also a source of the deepest emotions.

“I remember how, as the story of the Crucifixion was read, the church
would grow dark, as it seemed.... I know nothing of the substance of
the sermons now, but I remember the emotion they often called forth,
and how I with difficulty restrained my tears.... The hymns were a
great power in my life. I remember the joy with which I would sing, in
my own room, Ken’s Evening Hymn, and the awful joy of the Trinity Hymn
‘Holy, Holy, Holy’.”

In later years she said that she could not remember a time when God was
not an ever-present Friend, a knowledge which sustained her through the
darkest periods of her life, and her many struggles.

Whether she had at this time realised what her life-work was to be,
I cannot say, but it was at home that she began to enjoy her first
experience of teaching. Her brothers at the Merchant Taylors’ School
suffered much from the unintelligent teaching prevalent in the boys’
schools of that day, and received help in their Latin and Mathematics
from their clever elder sister. All this work doubtless helped to
develop in Dorothea that clear vigorous mentality that characterised
the great Head Mistress of Cheltenham, and impressed still more
definitely on her mind the need for reforms in education.

Duty seems to have been, even at this early age, the key-note of her
life, and she apparently bore an older girl’s usual share in domestic
affairs, helping with the mending and the usual work of the house.

But this time at home was just a quiet breathing space before wider
opportunities of study were granted to her.




                             CHAPTER III.

                          AT QUEEN’S COLLEGE.

 “Can you remember ... when the great things happened for which you
 seemed to be waiting? The boy, who is to be a soldier--one day he
 hears a distant bugle: at once he knows. A second glimpses a bellying
 sail: straightway the ocean path beckons to him. A third discovers a
 college and towards its kindly lamp of learning turns young eyes that
 have been kindled and will stay kindled to the end.”--JAMES LANE ALLEN.


The opening of Queen’s College marked a great advance in the cause
of girls’ and women’s education. It had its root in the Governesses’
Benevolent Institution, which was founded for the purpose of helping
governesses in times of need. This was originated by the Rev. C.
G. Nicolay, but in the year 1843 the Rev. David Laing, vicar of
Holy Trinity Church, Kentish Town, was made honorary secretary.
It was he who first saw that an institution that existed merely
to relieve distress was unsatisfactory, and sought to establish,
rather, an organisation to prevent the need for relief. Accordingly,
he established a Registry for Teachers, and set on foot a scheme
for granting diplomas. The latter naturally led to the starting of
examinations, which revealed such appalling depths of ignorance in
those who were supposed to instruct others, that the need for their
tuition was realised.

As is always the case in great movements many were thinking along the
same lines, and Miss Murray, Maid of Honour to the Queen, was at this
time meditating the starting of a College for Women, and was, as a
matter of fact, collecting funds for this purpose. As soon, however,
as she heard of Mr. Laing’s plans she handed over to him the money she
had collected. He consulted with the government about the establishment
of this college, and the Queen graciously allowed it to be named after
herself. A house in Harley Street, next door to the Governesses’
Benevolent Institution, was taken. Professors from King’s College were
asked to give lectures, and to many women for the first time higher
education became a possibility.

The committee, as at first constituted, included such well-known people
as Charles Kingsley, Sterndale Bennett, John Hullah, F. D. Maurice, and
R. C. Trench. It is still possible to see in book form the lectures
which inaugurated the work undertaken by Queen’s College. Though it
originated with the idea of helping governesses who wished to qualify
for their work, it numbered among its earliest students girls who were
to play an important part in many ways in the life of the nation. Among
the first pupils were Miss Buss, Adelaide Ann Proctor, Miss Jex-Blake,
and Dorothea Beale. At first there were no women lecturers or women
teachers, but many women offered their services as chaperones, and very
faithful they were in carrying out their trying and exacting duties.

The name of the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice will always be
associated with the founding of Queen’s College. Perhaps the name means
little to men and women of our generation, though he was not only a
great thinker but one of the pioneers of those who apply Christian
standards to social life. He founded a Working Men’s College, which
is still in existence, and took a great part in the work of Queen’s
College. He was compelled to resign his chair of theology at King’s
College, on account of his unorthodox beliefs, especially on the
question of eternal punishment. Throughout his life he suffered much
from charges of heresy, but he exercised a great influence on the
religious life of his day, and on that of subsequent generations. He
denounced any political economy based on selfishness, declaring it to
be false: the Cross, not self-interest, must be the ruling power of
the Universe. His lecture at the opening of Queen’s College was a most
inspiring one, and his words must have fallen on the ears of some of
the girls who listened to him like a call to high and noble service.

“The vocation of a teacher,” said he, “is an awful one: you cannot do
her real good, she will do others unspeakable harm, if she is not aware
of its usefulness.” He spoke against the harm done by simply providing
her with necessaries. “You may but confirm her in the notion that the
training of an immortal spirit may be just as lawfully undertaken in a
case of emergency as that of selling ribands.” He went on to speak with
great decision about the need of a thorough education for those whose
special work was “to watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the
first dawnings of intelligence: how thoughts spring into acts, how acts
pass into habits”.

It was probably about this time that Dorothea began to see what her
life-work was to be, and the noble inspiring words of this great
servant of God doubtless did much to strengthen in her mind the sense
of being called to high service. All through her career there is no
thought more marked than that of the loftiness of a teacher’s work.
From herself as well as from others of her calling she demanded that
consecration of body, mind and spirit without which there can be no
good work done. All who have read her “Addresses to Teachers,” and
other works on teaching, realise the high level on which she placed
the teacher’s calling, and the stress she laid on the need to pursue
continuously impossible ideals of goodness and efficiency.

“All of us have to begin and we live in the intimate consciousness of
this thought: Here is a child of God committed to my care, I am to help
in so developing him in time that he may be a dweller in the eternal
world here and hereafter. I, too, must live an eternal life, in order
that I may draw forth that consciousness in him. I must behold the Face
of the Father, and so become a light to my children that, seeing the
light shine in me, they may glorify that Father.”[1]

[1] “Addresses to Teachers,” I, by Dorothea Beale.

Queen’s College was the greatest boon to Dorothea Beale. It gave
her the chance of getting first-rate teaching in Mathematics and
Greek. With Mr. Astley Cook she read, privately, Trigonometry, Conic
Sections, and Differential Calculus. Soon after she was asked to teach
Mathematics and became the first lady Mathematical tutor. As a teacher
she could, _ex officio_, go to any class she liked, and attended at
different times lectures on Latin, Greek, Mental Science, and German.

One of her chief friends at this time was a girl of her own age,
Elizabeth Alston. The two used to study together, Elizabeth teaching
Dorothea singing, whilst her friend taught her to read the New
Testament in Greek. In later life she realised how much these singing
lessons had done for her, enabling her to use her voice without fatigue
for hours together.

Training colleges for elementary school teachers were established
before there was anything of the kind for the teachers of better class
children, and it was the head of the Battersea Training College who
examined the candidates and awarded the diplomas for knowledge of
methods of teaching.

At Queen’s College Dorothea Beale began to show signs of where her
power as a teacher would lie. Throughout life it was one of her
leading ideas that a teacher should be primarily an inspirer of her
pupils: that though she should never cease to prepare her work with
the greatest care, her aim should be chiefly to kindle the enthusiasm
that would make her pupils eager to learn for themselves. Even at this
early age she seems to have possessed this faculty, and long after she
left Queen’s College, she occasionally received letters from her former
pupils, saying how much her teaching had meant to them.

Her time there, however, was not to be long. There arose difficulties
which she felt could not be tolerated. These were, briefly, that one
particular person had too much authority, while the women visitors had
too little, and what they had was gradually diminishing. This led to
many evils, notably the promotion of children into the upper section,
or college, from the lower section, or school, long before they were
able to derive any benefit from advanced tuition.

Dorothea Beale returned from a summer holiday abroad in 1856 to find
these difficulties worse than ever. She and a friend thereupon sent in
their resignations, hoping to be able to avoid giving any explanation.
Dr. Plumptre, the Head, was, however, extremely anxious for her to
reveal the reason for her withdrawal, which she did very reluctantly.
After hearing her reasons for leaving, he acknowledged that she was
acting in accordance with her conscience and was trying to do what she
held to be her duty. Dorothea Beale throughout her life seems to have
had to fight against an impetuosity of nature which was in curious
opposition to that greatness of mind that enabled her to wait for
the carrying out of any great project. Her action in this connection
was characteristically impetuous, for before the correspondence was
concluded, she had accepted the post of Head Teacher at Casterton
School.

Already we find that she had formulated some of the educational
theories she held through life. One of these, which she mentioned in
her letter to Dr. Plumptre, was that girls can be thoroughly educated
only by women: that though some classes may be taken profitably by
men, the education of girls as a whole must be in the hands of their
own sex. She showed also her appreciation of the need for thorough
groundwork, without which no advanced work can be well done.

Though her action in this matter was characteristically impetuous, and
that of a young idealist, it revealed that strong sense of duty which
would not allow her to shrink from any painful experience, if the doing
of right was involved.

Dorothea Beale, probably because she was one of a big family of girls,
was apparently spared one of the most perplexing problems of modern
girls and women. From the moment when she felt herself called to the
work of teaching she seems to have had no doubt that she was right to
obey the call, and was thus saved the torment of the woman worker who
is haunted by the thought of home needs unfulfilled. The only daughter
in a home, who feels herself called to work outside it, has one of the
most difficult of life’s problems to face. She has the knowledge that
an ageing father and mother need her, that, perhaps, she will have by
and by to earn her own living, and has in her heart the incessant call
of the work that claims her. There is no one solution to a case of
this kind: every case must be judged independently. It is a difficulty
as inherent as sex or any other vital part of life, and needs to be
honestly and frankly faced. To most girls in this position, I should
say: Get your training early, whilst your parents are still strong and
well, so that if the opportunity of doing work comes you may be ready.
Some girls who live in big towns are able to combine home duties with
outside work: though on those who are not strong this life of twofold
duty is often a great strain. Others, less fortunately placed, realise
that the two are alternatives, the choice must be made, and the more
imperative duty accepted. In this connection it is well to realise, I
think, that the harder duty is not _of necessity_ the right one. The
work one dislikes is not necessarily the work one ought to undertake,
though it may be. The attitude of many religious people in the past
has, I think, been quite wrong in this respect. God has given to all of
us special talents and aptitudes, in the exercise of which we find our
greatest happiness and do our best work. To believe that the Creator
always calls us to do the uncongenial task is, to my mind, to mock His
plans. If, however, the beloved task has to be deferred, and the need
of our loved ones claims us, there comes with the accepted duty peace
and rest of mind, and the waiting time may be used for preparation of
mind, heart, and character. To many men and more women, who have kept
before them the vision of the work they would do, has often come in a
quite unforeseen way an opportunity of doing it: and they have realised
how much richer and better their life is for their wider experience
during the time of waiting.




                              CHAPTER IV.

                A DIFFICULT YEAR AND A TIME OF WAITING.

 “Difficulties are the stones out of which all God’s houses are
 built.”--ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON.


All readers of “Jane Eyre” will remember the school, Lowood, to
which Jane was sent, and her terrible experiences, especially at the
beginning of her time there. The foundation in actual life of this
school of fiction, coloured by the Brontë temperament, with its evils
exaggerated for the purposes of art, is known by all to be the Clergy
Daughters’ School at Casterton. As we have seen in the last chapter, it
was to this school that Dorothea Beale had somewhat hastily resolved
to go after sending in her resignation to the Head of Queen’s College.
Probably she looked upon the offer of this post as an indication that
she was to sever her connection with the college in London. If in her
decision she was to blame, she certainly paid the price of her mistake.

Casterton is near Kirkby Lonsdale, in a somewhat lonely district,
within sight of the rounded height of Ingleborough. Dear to the heart
of north-country people is this glorious wild country, but it must have
seemed terribly out of the world to a girl accustomed to the life of
London, to its libraries and lectures, and the many interests of the
metropolis.

From the first Dorothea Beale felt herself oppressed and hindered by
numbers of things which she did not approve, and could not alter. The
girls wore a uniform which she found terribly depressing: the rules of
the school were extremely rigid, and the restrictions so many that she
felt the girls had no room for growth. To her, the whole organisation
of the place seemed wrong in principle, and the effect on the character
of the girls of a too rigid discipline appears to have been pernicious.
To one whose views on education were already clearly defined, the
having to “carry on” without any power to change what was wrong, must
have been an extremely trying experience.

Nor was there much compensation in her own work of teaching: rather
the opposite. She found herself compelled to teach many subjects, far
more than she could do justice to: Scripture, Arithmetic, Mathematics,
Ancient and Modern Church History, Physical and Political Geography,
English Literature, Grammar and Composition, French, German, Italian,
and Latin. Holding such strong views as she did about the preparation
of lessons and the careful correction of children’s work, she must have
found this undue multiplication of subjects very unsatisfactory. There
can be, I suppose, for natures like Dorothea Beale’s, few things so
trying as circumstances which make a high standard of work impossible.
Her father’s letters to her at this time reveal the strong friendship
that existed between the two. She wrote home that she found the work
hard and her father replied, evidently with the idea of cheering her:--

“Employment is a blessed state, it is to the body what sleep is to the
mind.... I cannot be sorry when I hear that you are fully employed. I
am sure it will be usefully.... I feel I can bear your being so far and
so entirely away with some philosophy, and I am delighted that your
letters bear the tone of content, and that you have been taken notice
of by people who seem disposed to be kind to you.... Give an old man’s
love to all your pupils and may they make their fathers as happy as you
do.”

The difficulties at Casterton, however, did not grow less, but tended
rather to increase. Her parents began to have some inkling of these,
and to feel very doubtful whether she ought to stay at Casterton. On
her birthday, March 21, her father wrote again:--

“God bless you and give you many birthdays. I fear the present is not
one of the most agreeable: it is spent at least in the path of what
you consider duty, and so will never be looked back upon but with
pleasure.... Do not, however, my dear girl, think of remaining long
in a position which may be irksome to you, for thus, I think, it will
hardly be profitable to others, and indeed I question whether you would
maintain your health where the employment was so great and duty the
only stimulus to action. You have heard me often quote: ‘The hand’s
best sinew ever is the heart’.”

Two months later Mr. Beale wrote:--

“I long to see you again very much. I cannot get reconciled to your
position and feel satisfied that it is your place.... God bless you,
my dear girl, and blunt your feelings for the rubs of the world, and
quicken your vision for the beautiful and unseen of the world above
you.”

The sensitiveness her father alludes to in this letter was one of
Dorothea Beale’s leading characteristics to the end of her life.
Though she welcomed and considered the criticism of competent people
and often acted on it she had a curiously sensitive shrinking from
adverse judgment: and this often cut her off from valuable advice. Her
shyness, too, kept her from the friendship of those who, like herself,
were too diffident to make advances. In it, however, lay one of her
chief powers, the subtle perception that enabled her to see almost into
the very souls of the girls she taught. Once, at Cheltenham, a child
refused to admit that she had done wrong. One morning Dorothea Beale
sent for the class teacher. “Send So-and-So to me,” she said, “I can
see from her face this morning that she will tell me all.” And she was
right.

It was at Casterton that she adopted the simple style of dress that she
always preferred. One of her pupils thus describes her:--

“Her appearance, as I remember it then, was charming. Her figure was of
medium height. The rather pale oval face, high, broad forehead, large,
expressive grey eyes, all showed intellectual character. Her dress was
remarkable in its neatness. She wore black cashmere in the week, and a
pretty mouse-coloured grey dress on Sundays.”

Possibilities of making improvements at Casterton now began to weigh on
her mind. Unless things were changed she felt she could not stay, but
she was not inclined to give up without an effort at amelioration. She
determined to take a very bold step and to appeal to the Committee. Her
father was kept in touch with all her plans at this time and wrote:--

“I think we must be content to wait, at any rate for the present, and
see if any good comes from your interview with the Committee. You
notice two points chiefly--the low moral tone of the school and the
absence of prizes [distinctions, responsibilities, etc.]. The want
of sympathy and love (the great source of woman’s influence in every
condition of life) was the prominent feature of the establishment in my
mind after talking it over with you. But nothing can flourish if love
be not the ruling incentive....”

He goes on to say that he realises how much love and devotion she puts
into her work, but how useless it is when she is unsupported.

“Weigh the matter well before this Christmas,” he continues, “and if
you find no changes are made, the same cold management continued, send
in your resignation.”

Then the affectionate father concludes:--

“I cannot contemplate your not coming up at Christmas. As we grow older
each year makes us more desirous of the company of those we love;
perhaps, because we feel how soon we shall part with it altogether;
perhaps, because we are become more selfish, but such is the fact.”

The six members of the Committee apparently consented with some
reluctance to hear Dorothea, but she did get a hearing and brought her
chief objections before them. The experience was not so trying as she
had anticipated, and the Committee appeared fairly conciliatory. She
explained--in speaking of the absence of prizes--that by this term she
meant rather distinctions, privileges, and opportunities of doing good.
She offered to resign, but the Committee said, “Oh, no, certainly not”.
And she came away feeling that her efforts might have some good result.

Few people, whether individuals or collective bodies, can endure
criticism, and Dorothea Beale’s complaints seem to have caused a
great deal of discomfort in her relationship with those connected with
Casterton. This was increased very much by a suspicion that she was
not orthodox according to the evangelical low-church point of view.
She was considered “high,” and was suspected of holding extreme views
about baptismal regeneration, one of the storm centres of religious
controversy at this time. This caused even one of her chief friends on
the Committee to wish her to leave.

With the tenacity of purpose that characterised her through life,
she tried to believe that it was right for her to stay and fight the
difficulties at Casterton. Gradually, however, the impossibility of
doing so became evident, and she wrote to her father:--

“I do not see how it is possible to do much good. I may work upon a
few individuals, but the whole tone of the school is unhealthy, and I
never felt anything like the depression arising from the constant jar
upon one’s feelings caused by seeing great girls professing not to care
about religion.”

She suggested that she should send in her resignation, and her father
replied at length, giving her advice as to how to approach the
Committee, and again writing words of cheer:--

“Above all things take care of your health.... I am quite sure that
you have a long course of usefulness before you. The flattering regard
in which you are held at Queen’s College, and the constant means you
always have in London of constantly improving yourself, must teach you
somewhat of your own value. Though I would not indeed presume upon it
further than to give you confidence to act rightly.”

It was near the end of November before Dorothea made her final decision
to send in her resignation. She had not time to carry out this decision
before she received the following note from the Committee:--

“On your last interview with the Committee you implied an intention
of resigning in case certain alterations should not be made by the
Committee....

“The Committee are of opinion that, under the circumstances, it would
be better that your connection with the school should cease after
Christmas next, they paying you a quarter’s salary in advance.”

This note was received shortly before the Christmas holidays.

It is easier to imagine than to describe the effect of this summary
dismissal on a highly sensitive girl, whose actions had throughout
been prompted by a sincere desire for the good of the school. It is
difficult to endure the sense of failure in youth before one has
had assurance of one’s own powers. Again at this time her father’s
sympathetic letters, reminding her of the high motives with which she
had undertaken this work, were a great comfort to her. In after years
Dorothea Beale acknowledged the value of this year at Casterton. No
life is perhaps complete without its times of failure, as she must
have felt her year at Casterton to be. For the world is full of men
and women who fail, and it is only by personal knowledge of their
experience that we can sympathise with them and help them to rise above
it.

Many, however, appreciated the good work Dorothea Beale did at
Casterton, and her quiet and steady persistence in what she felt to be
right were not without their permanent influence on the school. Her
remembrance of this school was a source of pain to her, and yet, as the
years went on, she felt how much she owed to her experiences there. In
_The Times_ of November 19, 1906, there is an extract from a letter by
Canon A. D. Burton, Casterton Vicarage, Kirkby Lonsdale.

“I have read with interest your account of Miss Beale’s life. I think,
however, it is possible that it may give an erroneous impression with
regard to her connection with Casterton, and it may be of interest
if I mention that I happen to know something of the feelings she
entertained towards the school. Rather more than a year ago she wrote
to say that it had long been in her mind to do something for the school
in grateful remembrance of the benefit which her connection with it
had been to her, and this wish finally took shape in the founding of a
scholarship to Cheltenham, and the first Casterton-Beale Scholar is at
the present time in residence at that college.

“The Casterton Clergy Daughters’ School, like most other schools of
long standing, has a past which is not to be compared with its present.
That is no disparagement to it, but the reverse. Its present state is
one of high efficiency, but it is interesting that it was not on this
account only that Miss Beale wished her name to be always connected
with it, but because she felt herself in debt to it. ‘I owe much to
it,’ were her words. A few months ago she also presented to the school
an oil-painting of herself which was hung in the entrance hall.”

She did not leave Casterton, however, without some acknowledgment on
the part of the authorities and others that her work and character
had been appreciated. It must also have been a solace to her when Dr.
Plumptre, hearing of her resignation, at once wrote and spoke of the
possibility of a mathematical tutorship at Queen’s College.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was characteristic of Dorothea Beale that after she returned home
from Casterton with one part of her work finished and no other in
view, she did not idly waste her time but began a definite piece of
work--the writing of her history, “The Student’s Text-book of English
and General History”. The need of such a book was felt very strongly at
this time, partly because of the outcry against the papistical doctrine
inserted into Ince’s history, one of the most popular text-books of the
day. This book must have involved an enormous amount of work, though
it dealt only in outline with this vast subject. In the preface she
makes it clear to the student that no real knowledge of history can be
built upon such a slender foundation, and urges the need for filling
in the outlines by wide and thorough reading. Her history was not her
only occupation at this time; she did some visiting teaching--Latin and
Mathematics--at Miss Elwell’s school at Barnes.

She realised the difficulty of working steadily at home, knowing the
thousand distractions, social and domestic, that come to divert a girl
from any definite pursuits. So she adopted the plan of writing her
history in a large empty room at the top of the house. Here she would
work without a fire on cold winter days. Whether this was an expression
of the desire for Spartan simplicity of life which she always had, or
was done simply to keep away members of the family who might wish to
come and chat, one cannot say.

Dorothea Beale had evidently undertaken some work as secretary and
collector for the Church Penitentiary Association and for a Diocesan
Home at Highgate, working with Mrs. Lancaster. The latter greatly
appreciated her and her conscientious work, and realised what a
valuable helper she would be, if she could enlist her in this great
service. She approached her with the suggestion that she should take
the headship of the Home. Dorothea Beale considered the offer but
refused. This must have been a great test of faith in her own judgment.
Behind her were two experiences, both of which had ended in apparent
failure because of her inability to agree with the authorities. No
educational work was in view, and she must have questioned her own
wisdom in refusing this opportunity of service which came to her.
Yet it seems as if at this time there dawned on her mind the deep
conviction that she was called to educational work among her own class:
that with her temperament and ideas so much in advance of her own time
a headship was the only post that would give her the scope and freedom
that she needed if she was to do her best work. And so she waited, not
with idle hands and brain, but fully occupied with her history, her
teaching, and home duties.

It was probably about this time that she began her Diary, which she
kept with some intervals until the year 1901. The purpose of it seems
to have been to keep a record not of outward events but rather of her
moral and spiritual life. In it we have one of the many evidences
of that sternness towards herself which she maintained in all
circumstances of life, even in illness. Earlier, perhaps, than most
people, she seems to have realised that her influence on others would
depend entirely on what she herself was. One or two quotations from her
journal will illustrate the purpose of it.

 _March 6._--History. Aunt E. came. Cross at not getting my own way.
 Some idleness. Impatient manner.

 _April 14._--History. Elizabeth. Called on the Blenkarnes. Dined
 at Chapter House. Idle. Indulgence in reading story at my time for
 evening prayer. Unpunctual in morning. Thoughtless about Mama.

 _April 20._--History, 16th Century. Felt terribly cross. O grant me
 calmness.

 _June 4._--Saw Mrs. Barret. Copied. Neglected prayer greatly. Very
 worldly.

 _June 7._--Wrote letters. A terrible blank of worldliness. Idle.

 _June 9._--Wrote to Miss Elwell. Letter from Cheltenham. Copied
 certificates. Worldly. Spoke angrily to A.

At this time there are many allusions in her journal to crossness.
Probably it was the result of that supreme test of the active,
energetic mind--the enduring of uncertainty. In 1901 she wrote to a
friend about this period of her life:--

“Once I had an interval of work, and I thought perhaps God would not
give it me again--but after that interval He called me here. I think
now I can see better how I needed that time of comparative quiet and
solitude, and a time to think over my failures, and a time to be more
helpful to my family.”

Whilst still young, Dorothea Beale formed the habit of frequent
attendance at early Communion, which she maintained all through her
busy life. Like the saintly men and women of all ages, she felt that
the more strenuous and exacting her work, the more she needed these
hours of Communion. The Sacraments of the Church as generally necessary
to salvation she believed to be two--Baptism and Holy Communion--but
the whole of life to her was sacramental. More and more as years passed
by did outward and visible things become to her the signs of inward and
spiritual realities: to her, and to those of her school of thought,
sacramentalism meant “the discovery of the river of the water of life
flowing through the whole desert of human existence”.

But Dorothea Beale was no dreamy, unpractical mystic, holding herself
aloof from the practical difficulties of life. She realised that there
is little value in a religion that cannot find expression in the life
of every day; and little strength in the soul that is not continually
fortified by the struggle of work and the carrying out of duty.

“The religion of Dorothea Beale,” says Mrs. Raikes, “was far indeed
from being a mere succession of beautiful and comforting thoughts. It
meant authority. It involved all the difficulties of daily obedience,
it meant the fatigue of watching, the pains of battle, sometimes
the humiliation of defeat. Intense as was her feeling on religious
subjects, it was never permitted to go off in steam, as she would term
it, but became at once a practical matter for everyday life.”




                              CHAPTER V.

                           SMALL BEGINNINGS.

  O, I am sure they really came from Thee,
  The urge, the ardour, the unconquerable will,
  The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,
  A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep.
  These speed me on.

  --WALT WHITMAN, “Prayer of Columbus”.


Until about 1825, Cheltenham was simply a small market-town,
famous for its mild climate and fertile soil, but at this time its
medicinal springs were discovered, and it became the fashion for
royalty and aristocracy to take the waters. Between 1801 and 1840
the population of Cheltenham increased tenfold. In 1843, Cheltenham
College, a proprietary school for boys, was opened. Ten years later,
on September 30, 1853, a meeting was held in the house of the Rev.
H. Walford Bellairs, who was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools in
Gloucestershire, and a prospectus was drawn up of “A College in
Cheltenham for the education of young ladies and children under eight”.

The instruction was to include the Liturgy of the Church of England,
grammar, geography, arithmetic, French, drawing, needlework. The fees
were to range from 6 guineas to 20 guineas a year, and the capital was
to consist of £2000 in £10 shares. The entire management and control
were to be in the hands of the founders, the Rev. H. W. Bellairs; the
Rev. W. Dobson, Principal of Cheltenham College; the Rev. H. A. Holden,
Vice-Principal; Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzmaurice; Dr. S. E. Comyn; and
Mr. Nathaniel Hartland.

They appointed as Principal Mrs. Procter, the widow of Colonel Procter,
and as Vice-Principal her daughter, Miss Procter, who was understood
to be the actual head. Mrs. Procter was to furnish the wisdom and
stability of mature years, Miss Procter the youth and vigour necessary
for teaching. A younger sister held the post of secretary.

At first it was intended that the college should be restricted to day
pupils, but it was soon found that this would limit its usefulness,
and some months before the opening of the school the proprietors had
arranged for three boarding-houses, the fees of which were extremely
low, being only £40 a year.

Cheltenham Ladies’ College was laid on good foundations. The founders
had an ardent desire for a thorough and liberal education, and their
ideas were well carried out from the very beginning of the school’s
career. The teaching appears to have been of a high order, the teachers
were people of conscience and ability. In her “History of Cheltenham
Ladies’ College,” Miss Beale quotes from old pupils who spoke most
highly of the early days.

The school was opened on February 13, 1854, in Cambray House, where the
great Duke of Wellington had once stayed for about six weeks. It was
a fine square-built house with a beautiful garden. By the end of the
first year the 100 pupils had increased to 150; the second year also
marked an increase. But after that the numbers began to go down, until
at the end of 1857 the numbers had fallen to 89, and the capital had
begun to diminish.

Some disagreement on educational methods then arose between Miss
Procter and the Committee, with the result that the former resigned and
started another school in Cheltenham, which was continued for thirty
years.

The Principal’s letter to the Committee on her departure shows her
scrupulous care of the property of others:--

  “MY DEAR SIR,

 “I thank you much for your kind letter enclosing your cheque for £41
 10s. 6d.

 “I take this opportunity of sending you the keys of the college. The
 house has been cleaned throughout. The chimneys have all been swept.

 “Some few stores--nearly ¹⁄₄ cwt. of soap, some dip candles, and two
 new scrubbing brushes--are in the closet in the pantry.

 “The new zinc ventilator is in the press used for the drawing
 materials.

 “Two cast-iron fenders, of mine, have been removed from two of the
 class-rooms.

  “I remain, my dear Sir,
  “Yours very sincerely,
  “S. ANNE PROCTER.”

It was in May, 1858, that the advertisement for a new Principal of
Cheltenham College appeared in various papers.

 CHELTENHAM LADIES’ COLLEGE.

 “A vacancy having occurred in the office of lady Principal, candidates
 for the appointment are requested to apply by letter (with references)
 before June 1 to J. P. Bell, Esq., Hon. Sec., Cheltenham.

 “A well educated and experienced lady (between the ages of thirty-five
 and forty-five) is desired, capable of conducting an institution with
 not less than one hundred day pupils.

 “A competent knowledge of German and French, and a good acquaintance
 with general English literature, arithmetic, and the common branches
 of female education, are expected.

 “Salary, upwards of £200 a year, with furnished apartments and other
 advantages.

 “No testimonials to be sent until applied for, and no answers will be
 returned except to candidates apparently eligible.”

Dorothea Beale applied for this post and was accepted as a candidate
for the headship. She had now to set about getting testimonials and
recommendations. Some of these are interesting.

Miss Elwell, at whose school she had taught, wrote:--

“You have succeeded in making subjects usually styled dry, positively
attractive, whilst your plan has been successful in forming not merely
superficial scholars, even whilst producing results in a remarkably
short period.”

Her friend, Elizabeth Ann Alston, wrote:--

“Of her power of teaching others and making them delight in their
studies, there is no doubt. But you do not know her, as I do, in her
home and daily life: there all look up to her and seek her counsel.”

Many testimonials were given as to her character and work, and these
made such a favourable impression on the Cheltenham Committee that she
was summoned for an interview on June 14.

She evidently had not any suitable clothes to wear on such a formidable
occasion, and had to borrow a blue silk frock from her sister Eliza.
Perhaps the work on her history had prevented her from attending to
her wardrobe. She was appointed and everything seemed happily settled.
One can imagine with what joy she looked forward to this opportunity
of doing the work she longed to do untrammelled by bonds made by those
of differing ideas. After all these months of waiting she had at last
obtained her heart’s desire.

But the stigma of leaving Casterton was not easily removed, and a great
blow awaited her.

On July 12 she received a letter from Mr. J. Penrice Bell, the
Honorary Secretary of the Committee, saying that he had received from
two gentlemen letters about her religious views, that might make it
necessary for the Cheltenham Ladies’ College Committee to reconsider
their decision. He quoted briefly their allegations:--

“‘She, Miss Beale, is very High Church, to say the least, and holds
ultra views of baptismal regeneration.’ ... ‘She has also a serious
and deep religious feeling, and a self-denying character. _But_ she is
decidedly High Church. Her opinions on the vital and critical question
of sacramental grace are altogether those of the High Church or
Tractarian school.’”

To a sensitive girl like Dorothea Beale this was indeed a shock,
but she was determined not to lose the desired work through any
misunderstanding, and replied at once to Mr. Bell explaining her views
on baptism, which were said to be “extreme”:--

“If you understand by the _opus operatum_ ‘efficacy’ of baptism that
all who are baptized are therefore saved.... I explicitly state that
I do not hold that doctrine. I believe baptism to be ‘an outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us: to be the
appointed means for admitting members into the Church of Christ’.”

The allegation that she belonged to the High Church party she dealt
with:--

“Your second question [i.e. did she belong to the High Church?] ...
cannot be categorically answered, since it has never been defined what
are the opinions of the High Church party; I would say that I differ
from some who assume that title.... I think no one could entertain a
greater dread than I of those Romish opinions entertained by some ‘who
went out from us, but were not of us’: indeed, during the last six
months, I have been engaged in preparing an English history for the use
of schools, _because_ Ince’s “Outlines” (a book used in your college)
inculcates Romish doctrines.”

The conclusion of her letter shows how clearly she realised the effect
that might be produced if the Committee revoked their decision:--

“I have endeavoured to be perfectly candid: should the Council decide
that my views are so unsound that I am unfit to occupy the position to
which I have been appointed, I shall trust that they will allow me to
make as public a statement of my opinions as they are obliged to make
of my dismissal, for I shall feel that after this no person of moderate
views will trust me, and my own conscience would not allow me to work
with the extreme party in either High or Low Church.”

The suspense whilst the Committee’s decision hung in the balance must
have been great. Her diary indicates this:--

 _July 12._--Mr. Bell’s letter about High Church from Cheltenham, and
 my answer. Some vanity. (Prayer) for resignation.

 _July 14._--Letter from Cheltenham. Neglect of prayer. Several times
 rude.

The Committee, however, seem to have been satisfied with her letter to
Mr. Bell, and another to Mr. Bellairs, in which she referred him to
two friends who knew what her religious views were, sending him also
two books, “which I have published without my name--not because I was
ashamed of expressing what I thought right, but because one naturally
shrinks from expressing without necessity one’s inner religious life”.

They still had one more question, which Mr. Bell asked in his next
letter:--

“Holding the opinions you have expressed, should you consider it a
duty and feel it incumbent on you to inculcate them in your Divinity
instruction to the pupils?”

To this she replied:--

“I quite feel it to be a Christian duty, if it be possible, to live
peaceably with all men, not giving heed to those things which minister
questions rather than godly edifying, but I am sure you would feel
I should be unworthy of your confidence could I through any fear of
consequences resort to the least untruthfulness.”

                 [Illustration: DOROTHEA BEALE IN 1859

                                p. 32]

The difficulty was thus ended, and Dorothea Beale entered her
kingdom. In spite of the many possibilities of giving offence, from
the beginning she made the Scripture lessons the very centre of her
teaching. To these she went herself not only with her carefully
prepared work but with her heart and soul equally equipped. She
demanded equal reverence in her pupils, and during times of building at
the college the noise of the hammer was suspended when these lessons
were being given.

There is little record about the beginning of her work at Cheltenham.
Twice Miss Brewer, who was to be Vice-Principal, called upon her:
and there are one or two entries in her diary about “shopping” and
“turning-out”. Even the date (August 4) on which she set out for
Cheltenham with her mother is only known by deduction. One can imagine,
however, the spirit in which Dorothea Beale set out into the unknown.
Was it to be failure or success? Were her powers equal to the many
difficulties that lay before her? Would the Committee turn out to be
the kind of people with whom she could work? But we know enough to be
sure that she looked to God as her guide in all things, and that in
offering herself for this great work of education she laid her life and
all her powers at His feet.

Dorothea Beale’s first two years at Cheltenham were a struggle from
beginning to end. When she arrived the College had begun to go down,
and many of the elder girls had left with Miss Procter, so that the
oldest pupils were now only thirteen or fourteen years of age. Mrs.
Raikes in her “Life,” quotes a description of her from a pupil who was
at the school when she arrived:--

“I can see her now as she appeared in reality--the slight, young
figure, the very gentle, gliding movements, the quiet face with the
look of intense thoughtfulness and utter absence of all poor and common
stress and turmoil, the intellectual brow, the wonderful eyes with
their calm outlook and their expression of inner vision.”

One of her first decisions was to continue and make permanent the
rule of silence, which Miss Procter had introduced at the beginning
of the college. She was, at first, full of doubts as to the wisdom of
this rule but was so well satisfied with the results that she never
saw any reason to alter it. Pupils were allowed to speak only with a
teacher’s permission, which was always given when it was necessary.
Her reasons for the ordaining of this rule were to inculcate habits of
self-control, to prevent the making of friendships of which parents
might not approve, to secure concentration and good discipline. It was
very rigidly enforced, and if a girl broke it only a few times in the
term a remark to that effect was inevitably put into her Report. One
of the jokes frequently made against the Ladies’ College was that no
Cheltenham girl could talk!

The history of these two years is given very graphically in Miss
Beale’s History of the College, from which the following account is
almost entirely taken. When Miss Beale was appointed there were only
sixty-nine girls left, of whom fifteen had already given notice (of
these only one actually left). Only £400 was left out of the original
capital. The ladies who had kept boarding-houses gave up on account of
the uncertainty, and several of the original shareholders sold their
£10 shares for £5.

“Several birds of prey,” said Miss Beale, “were seen hovering about
expecting the demise of the College, and it would probably have ceased
to exist had there not remained two years of the Cambray lease, for
the rent of which £200 a year had to be found. It is impossible to
give an adequate idea of the hard struggle for existence maintained
during the next two years, and of the minute economies which had to be
practised. _Haec nunc meminisse juvat._ The Principal was blamed for
ordering prospectuses without leave at the cost of fifteen shillings,
and the second-hand furniture procured would not have delighted people
of æsthetic taste. Curtains were dispensed with as far as possible, and
it was questioned whether a carving-knife was required by the Principal
in her furnished apartments.”

The teaching staff was reduced as far as possible and the Principal
and Vice-Principal gave up their half-holiday to chaperone those girls
who took lessons from masters. The Principal did a great deal of
teaching at this time including Scripture throughout the College.

Everything that could be done in those two years to curtail expenditure
was done. The gain or loss of one pupil was considered an important
event. One day Miss Beale was at dinner when a father called with two
girls. The maid sent him away, saying that her mistress was at dinner.
Miss Beale, however, sent her at once in pursuit after the departing
visitors. She spoke to the maid afterwards about this matter and said,
“I am never at dinner”.

At the end of these two years the lease of Cambray House expired, and,
though the deficit was less at the end of 1860 than in 1859, there
was not a single member of the Committee who was willing to take the
responsibility of renewing the lease. Many causes conspired to make the
school unpopular at this time, and the question of giving it up had to
be seriously considered.

Just when things were at their worst a deliverer appeared in the person
of Mr. J. Houghton Brancker, who was asked to audit the accounts.
After a thorough investigation this gentleman gave his verdict that
it was impossible for the school ever to pay its way with the then
system of fees. Accordingly he drew up a scheme which he considered
satisfactory, lowering the ordinary fees, but making music and drawing,
which had hitherto been included in the ordinary curriculum, extra
subjects. Mr. Brancker was asked to join the Council; under his able
rule as chancellor of the exchequer, the College finances began to
improve, and grinding anxiety about money matters soon became a thing
of the past. Cambray House was taken by the year until things were in
a more satisfactory state, but such a precaution was unnecessary, as
the College after this had a career of almost unbroken progress and
prosperity.

Financial difficulties were not, however, the only ones that Miss Beale
had to fight, nor were they the hardest. Far greater foes to her peace
of mind were those of ignorance, prejudice, and lack of ideals about
girls’ education. Practical difficulties, too, stood in the way of high
attainment. Dorothea Beale relates some of these in her “History of the
Ladies’ College”. It was said that college life would “turn girls into
boys”. Day schools for girls were unpopular, and the custom of having
morning and afternoon school caused parents a great deal of trouble in
sending maids with their children. Teachers were scarce and those to be
had were very inferior.

“Do you prepare your lessons?” asked Dorothea Beale of a candidate.

“Oh no!” she replied, “I never teach anything I don’t understand.”

Parents looked with horror on the teaching of mathematics and even
advanced arithmetic, in spite of the poverty to which ignorance of
investments often reduced women.

Some reminiscences of former pupils give a little idea of what Dorothea
Beale was like in her teaching and in her relationship to her children.

“I never remember her raising her voice, scolding us, being satirical
or impatient with dullness or inattention. She was not satirical even
when a small girl, on being asked what criticism might be passed
on Milton’s treatment of “Paradise Lost,” ventured the audacious
suggestion that the poet was ‘verbose’.”

Her methods were designed to encourage rather than to repress. A pupil
recalls “an afternoon when she visited the needlework room and found
me being most justly blamed for inefficiency. In kindly tones she said
to the shy and clumsy culprit: ‘You ought to sew well, for your mother
has such beautiful long fingers,’ and somehow I felt comforted and
encouraged. Then there was a day when I summoned up courage to go and
tell her that I had been guilty of some small disobedience as well as
others who had been detected and punished. She seized the opportunity
of impressing upon me that as I was (though only fourteen) a teacher
in my father’s Sunday School--a fact of which I did not know she was
aware--I must surely see that obedience to rule was necessary. I can
still hear the low, earnest tones in which she made her appeal to my
sense of justice and right.”

At this period of her life her power was probably as great as it ever
was, though the scope was comparatively narrow.

“It is my peculiar privilege,” writes one, “to have spent all my
college career in her class, to go through years of her special
personal teaching. In later days when the College assumed large
dimensions, such an experience must have been rare; to those who could
claim it, it meant a potent influence for life. How vividly can I
recall her sitting on her little daïs, scanning the long schoolroom
and discovering anything amiss at the far end of it; or making a tour
of inspection to the various classes with a smiling countenance that
banished terror.”

Her personal relationship to any of her children in sorrow was always a
very tender one.

“When I was almost a child at College I lost my mother and shall never
forget Miss Beale’s tender sympathy and help. She took such interest
in my preparation for Confirmation and brought me herself to my first
Communion--just she and I alone: a day I shall always remember. All
through my girlhood she was a kind and ready adviser, and continued her
interest throughout my married life. One always felt whatever happened
to one, ‘Now I must tell Miss Beale’.”

So with the varied joys of teaching, and the difficulties of narrow
means, and the opposition of supporters of the old régime, did Dorothea
Beale’s life at Cheltenham begin.

Forty years later she wrote of this time:--

“How often I was full of discouragement. It was not so much the want of
money as the want of ideals that depressed me. If I went into society I
heard it said: ‘What is the good of education for our girls? They have
not to earn their living.’ Those who spoke did not see that, for women
as for men, it is a sin to bury the talents God has given: they seemed
not to know that the baptismal right was the same for girls as for
boys, alike enrolled in the army of light, soldiers of Jesus Christ.”

No knight of olden times who rode forth against the evils of his day
needed greater courage than this woman who set out to destroy the evils
of prejudice, custom, and ignorance. I have spoken sometimes with her
“old girls,” who were with her in the early days, and were among the
first to enter on paths untrodden by women’s feet. They were like men
who seek a new land; no sacrifice seemed too great; no toil seemed too
hard. Following their dauntless leader they knew themselves to be the
vanguard of a great army of women infinite in number and of unknown
power.




                              CHAPTER VI.

                             ON EDUCATION.

 “Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed.”--TENNYSON, “The
 Princess”.


In order to understand Dorothea Beale’s work and that of her many
contemporaries who were working towards the same end, it is necessary
to know something of the depths to which girls’ education had sunk in
that day. All readers of Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies” are familiar
with his bitter invective against the attitude of parents towards this
important question, and his passionate appeal for reform. And Ruskin
was only one of the many men who realised the pity of the paltry and
superficial education that girls received, and the extent to which the
whole world suffered on this account. So strong had public feeling
become among the better educated on this burning question that, in the
year 1864, a Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted; and as far as
possible a thorough investigation was made of the subject. Reports on
Girls’ Schools were given by Mr. Fitch, Mr. Bryce, and others.

To all interested in education the Blue Book is an extremely
interesting document. The evidence and reports are based on what was
seen and known, and present a terrible indictment of the then condition
of girls’ schools.

“Although,” says Mr. Bryce, “the world has now existed for several
thousand years, the notion that women have minds as cultivable and
worth cultivating as men’s minds is still regarded by the ordinary
British parent as an offensive, not to say a revolutionary, paradox.”

Dorothea Beale’s report, the one with which we are most concerned here,
is very comprehensive, and gives not only her theories of education but
also an account of the methods employed in her school. The questions
asked give a good idea of the many questions that disturbed the minds
of thoughtful people of that day; the anxiety lest higher education
should injure the health of girls; the fear of the over-stimulating
effects of examinations, of the publicity of examination results and of
the possible effects on girls’ natural reserve and modesty.

In her reply to the various questions asked, Dorothea Beale gave a
good deal of information about her own school and the condition of
education it revealed. The Entrance Examination at Cheltenham showed as
a rule deplorable results. Frequently girls came from expensive schools
incapable of writing, spelling, or composing in their own language,
almost ignorant of French grammar and scarcely able to work correctly
the simplest sums in arithmetic.

“I think the remedy for bad work,” said she, “is to bring such work
to the light. I think it is because it has all been carried on in
darkness, because the parents are not able to distinguish between good
and bad, and nobody knows that things have reached such a state.”

She then went into some particulars about the work at Cheltenham
Ladies’ College, hours of work, the rule by personal influence
rather than by punishments, the law of silence and her approval of
examinations as leading to more thorough work. She also went into the
reasons why she considered that women were better educators of girls
than men, and _ceteris paribus_ were quite equal to them as teachers.
The education of boys at that time she considered to be rather
unsatisfactory, and too limited in scope. She did not believe that boys
and girls should be taught on absolutely different lines, as that would
undoubtedly hinder friendship and _camaraderie_ in marriage as well as
in ordinary social intercourse.

On the question of health Miss Beale was most emphatic. She did not
believe that study alone injured health, and in her belief she is more
in sympathy with the thought of to-day than with that of twenty or
thirty years ago. Examinations and study in the early days of higher
education for women seemed to work a good deal of havoc with health.
But when we look back in the light of modern thought much of the harm
seems to have been wrought by unscientific arrangement of hours of
work--it was considered heroic to “burn the midnight oil”; the eating
of insufficient or unsuitable food; the undertaking of strenuous work
by delicate girls unfit for hard work of any kind; and the lack of
wholesome recreation.

When she was asked by Mr. Acland about the effect of eagerness in study
on the health of girls about sixteen, she replied:--

“I think it improved their health very much, and I am sure great
harm is often done by a hasty recommendation to throw aside all study
when a temperate and wisely regulated mental diet is really required.
They will not do nothing--you cannot say to the human mind that it
shall absolutely rest; but if they have not wholesome and proper and
unexciting occupations they will spend their time on sensational novels
and things much more injurious to their health. When I have heard
complaints about health being injured by study, they have proceeded
from those who have done least work at college. Indeed I do not know
of any case of a pupil who has really worked and whose health has been
injured: we have had complaints in a few cases where the girls have
been decidedly not industrious.”

The following emphatic statement expresses the opinion of most
educationalists on the deplorable effect that “just going to live
at home” has on the health of many girls. There are few things that
teachers of senior girls dread more than an aimless life in a home
where there are no responsibilities and no definite duties. There is no
real reason, of course, why this should be so, as a girl of leisure at
home has often opportunities of doing work that no one else can do; but
many lack the energy and enterprise for seeking out such work, and are,
in consequence, idle and miserable:--

“For one girl in the higher middle classes who suffers from overwork,
there are, I believe, hundreds whose health suffers from the feverish
love of excitement, from the irritability produced by idleness and
frivolity and discontent. I am persuaded, and my opinion has been
confirmed by experienced doctors, that the want of wholesome occupation
lies at the root of much of the languid debility of which we hear so
much after girls have left school.”

She also gave some account of her own methods of teaching. French
and German were studied before Latin and Greek. In Geometry she
always dealt with the propositions as riders, and employed methods
which, twenty years later, became common in all schools. This was
somewhat extraordinary at a time when many children, boys and girls
alike, understood so little of what was required, that they learned
the propositions by heart. Science was taught so as to create
not specialists but human beings with an intelligent but general
understanding of the phenomena of everyday life. It is interesting
to read in a pamphlet published this year, 1919, by the Ministry
of Reconstruction, that much of the present day lack of interest
in Science is due to the lack of general training of this kind.
Foundations are laid at school as if every man and every woman were
going to be a scientist, and the average boy and girl leave school with
a certain amount of skill in measuring and weighing, but with none of
that illuminating general knowledge that makes the world so vastly
interesting.

In religious teaching, “we try,” said Dorothea Beale, “to make our
teaching practical as regards the daily duties of life upon which we
are all agreed, instead of dwelling on points of doctrine wherein we
differ”.

Dorothea Beale was always anxious to work in sympathy with parents, not
in antagonism to their aims. She realised, as does every wise teacher,
that parents see a quite different side of their children and was glad
of any information that might be a help in understanding the child. She
was very desirous that people should be frank with her if there was any
cause of dissatisfaction with the school, and was most anxious to know
if a child was at all overworked. Any complaint of this kind was at
once dealt with, and if a child was overworked the remedy of dropping
one or two subjects was usually applied.

Along with other educationalists of that day Miss Beale deplored
the excessive amount of time given to the practice of the piano,
complaining that it absorbed energies that ought to be used for the
general culture of the mind. She suggested that no girl should give
more than one hour a day to the piano, unless she had decided talent,
that parents should cease to attach so exaggerated a value to this
accomplishment, and that those who had a natural incapacity should be
allowed to leave off music altogether.

Our generation is beginning at last to allow music for girls to take
only its fair share of time along with other subjects and to train the
mind and soul to appreciate rather than the hands merely to perform. We
are beginning to realise that born musicians are few, though the need
for music in life is universal. To train the ear to hear, the body to
feel rhythm, is held to be more important than the mere technique of
piano-playing.




                             CHAPTER VII.

                                GROWTH.

  Men say the dreams of twenty-two
  The winds of thirty shall undo....
  We prove them liars, do we not?
  Which of our dreams have we forgot?

  --FRANK BETTS.


“At the end of five years’ hard struggle,” writes Dorothea Beale in
1863, “it was pleasant to read in the (Examiner’s) Report: ‘This
examination has convinced us that the plan and working of this
institution are admirable and calculated to supply a growing want
in our community ... that of a real and solid higher education for
ladies’.”

The year 1864 was a turbulent one. The Principal had long been
dissatisfied with the college hours, feeling that they were most
unsatisfactory for teachers and children. The new plan was to have
school from 9.10 a.m. to 1 o’clock, thus increasing the length of
morning school and having no school in the afternoon. This led to a
great outcry in the town. The local papers condemned the innovation.
Teachers who wanted a half-holiday every afternoon were said to be
idle. Parents complained that the children would be on their hands all
the afternoon and they would have to engage governesses. There was
practically war between the local people and the College authorities.
The Council and Dorothea Beale felt very strongly on this matter,
realising indeed that the future of the school probably depended on
the carrying out of their plans. A memorial signed by the shareholders
and others was sent, and the Council replied that the plan would be
tried for one term, at the end of which they would consult the wishes
of the parents. So successful, however, was the scheme that at a
General Meeting held at the end of the time mentioned, only eight
voted in favour of the old régime. As every one knows, the plan which
Dorothea Beale introduced against such strong opposition has since
that time been adopted by every High School, and has in the main made
for a higher standard of work, and better health, both in pupils and
in teachers. A number of children, as a rule, go to school in the
afternoon, but it is chiefly for preparation and lighter lessons, such
as drawing and needlework.

By 1864, under Mr. Brancker’s careful administration, all anxiety about
financial matters had come to an end. The Principal continued, however,
to do much of the teaching herself, and the girls who were there at
this time always reckoned themselves particularly fortunate that they
came so directly under the influence of the Head. In later days this
was, of course, impossible. All the classes were held in the big hall,
but as soon as possible a schoolroom was provided for the lowest
division. Dorothea Beale, as a rule, took her classes there, except
very small ones which she often took in her own private rooms.

The strongholds of prejudice began to crumble. It became easier to
teach Mathematics, Physics, etc., as a little of the old antagonism
began to disappear and the number of the senior girls increased.

About this time she drew up her tabular scheme for learning English
and World History. Many thought this system would bring a new era in
the learning of dates, etc., but it does not seem to have been very
generally adopted.

In these early days at Cheltenham Dorothea Beale was often distressed
by gossip and back-biting. She was always particularly sensitive to
this kind of thing, and her actions were at times subject to the
criticism even of friends. But she gradually learnt to trouble less
about outside adverse opinion, though she would never have been able
to tolerate the least suspicion of criticism and disloyalty within the
school. On one occasion an untrue rumour of a serious nature was set on
foot against one of the boarding-house mistresses. Some in the College
had listened to this rumour and the Principal spoke to the teachers on
the subject.

“Now I have nothing to do to judge them that are without. We must
cheerfully bear evil-speaking. But if it comes from within the matter
is for that reason a serious one; for this reason I feel it must be
traced up to its source.... I feel I can appeal to you as lovers of
truth, as those who feel that no advantages of education, of health, or
any other, can compensate for the disadvantages which would arise to
any children who lived in an atmosphere of evil-speaking, lying, and
slandering.”

More than most Heads, perhaps, Dorothea Beale had the gift of inspiring
loyalty in her staff. As the College grew older the teachers were
largely recruited from Old Girls. Some women there now, no longer
young, have been at the College since childhood. It would be impossible
to mention the number of teachers whose love and devotion to their
Principal did much to ease her work and cheer her spirit. Perhaps
of these none did more for her than the first Head Teacher whom she
herself had trained. This was Miss Belcher, later Head of the great
school at Bedford. She was in many ways of the greatest help to Miss
Beale, not only in practical things but in her spiritual influence.
In addressing the Head Mistresses’ Conference just before her death,
Dorothea Beale spoke of some of the Heads of schools who had been
trained at Cheltenham. Very affectionately she spoke of Miss Belcher,
and told a story of her great loyalty to the College.

Miss Belcher and another teacher, at a time when headships were very
rare, came to her and told her that they had determined to apply for
one. Miss Beale said, “Events are imminent which will shake the College
to its very foundations”. They said, “We shall not apply”.

Her early days at Cheltenham were very full, so much so that her father
wrote in a teasing spirit:--

“You always write as if you were at the top of your speed, and this
is not good. I doubt not you have a great deal to occupy your time
and your attention, but pray do not be always in a hurry, you will
inevitably break down if you are so--you will lose in power what you
gain in speed as certainly as in mechanics: and with greater danger to
the regularity of the machine.... I am really fearful to take up your
time.... I daresay now that you are scrambling through my note without
that respect to which the writer and the subject are entitled. But pray
remember that to neglect (the care of your health) is the worst economy
in the world.”

In 1862 Dorothea Beale had the great sorrow of her father’s death, an
event which left a great blank in her life.

Holidays at this time were spent partly at Cheltenham, partly abroad.
When on the Continent she visited schools and gained new ideas for
her work. For, to her, life and work were one. Nearly everything she
did bore directly or indirectly on the one purpose of her life. It is
impossible to enter into the spirit of her life unless one realises
this singleness of aim. No nun, bound to her vocation by holy vows,
could be more dedicated than was Dorothea Beale to the great work of
education. It was to her the call of the Master to forsake all and
follow Him.

This spirit in her expressed itself in many ways; in her simplicity of
life, which she maintained always. Her way of living was always plain,
as was her style of dress. In later life she dressed more grandly, but
this was forced upon her by others who felt she ought to do so, and
was not the expression of her own wishes. When she went to Cheltenham,
she decided for the sake of her work not to go out in the evenings.
I believe, as a matter of fact, that it was quite easy to keep this
resolution, as Cheltenham society was extremely “exclusive” at that
time, and was not sufficiently assured of the social position of women
teachers to invite them out to anything except perhaps a quiet tea.

Dorothea Beale had very little small talk, and was too quietly
thoughtful to be a great success socially. She was quite content to
go on steadily with her teaching, her careful preparation of lessons,
her painstaking correction of the children’s work, her thoughts and
plans for wider work, all of which were slowly but surely laying the
foundations of a new intellectual world for women. One of the ideas
which she was never able to carry out was that of a Sisterhood of
Teachers, consisting of a band of teachers who should live frugal,
self-denying lives in a Community under a Mother Superior. These should
have no personal possessions, but should live, as nuns do, a life
devoted to their vocation. Later in life she became less anxious for
such a Sisterhood, believing that the inward spirit of consecration
could exist equally well without the outward and visible signs of
devotion.

In our day we urge the necessity of having interests outside our
special calling; to have hobbies, games, or a different kind of work
which will be recreative; to have, as it were, in our brain several
lines of rails to prevent the chief one from getting worn out. But
though we have become more scientific in the management of life the
main fact remains the same, that the work to which we are called is a
stern mistress and will demand our whole-hearted service.

Growth is rarely a painless process, and Dorothea Beale felt that some
of her greatest difficulties began after the College entered on its
period of rapid development. By the year 1871, it had grown too big
for Cambray House, and a site for a new building was purchased for the
sum of £800. This purchase had to be endorsed by the Annual Meeting of
Shareholders in June, but this was considered a mere formality. A good
many shareholders, however, were interested in the Cambray property,
and the meeting decided not to ratify the purchase but to re-sell the
land. This was a great shock to the Council and the Principal, who
knew the need for having bigger and better premises, and the Council
announced their intention of resigning.

A special General Meeting was called for September 30. At this meeting
Dr. Jex-Blake, the Principal of Cheltenham College, who was in the
chair, pleaded most eloquently the cause of the Ladies’ College. I will
quote part of his speech as showing something of the esteem in which
the College was held at this date.

“Teachers so able and energetic and successful,” said he, “have a
right to the greatest consideration and the very best arrangements
for teaching. A Ladies’ College so distinguished, second to none in
England, has a right to every advantage that can be secured for it:
a right to be lodged in a building of its own: a building perfect
in its internal arrangements, and outwardly of some architectural
attractiveness: one that should be a College and should look like a
College.”

At this meeting those who desired extension carried the day, and soon
the erection of the new buildings was begun. On Lady Day, 1873, the
College moved into the new building. So quietly and unobtrusively was
this done, that hardly a single half-hour of lessons was lost. Many
extensions followed, including the addition of art and music wings,
and kindergarten rooms. Those who were at the College in those days
were familiar with the continual noise of building; in 1882 it ceased:
“after this the sound of the hammer was not heard for nearly four
years.” Dorothea Beale’s policy of building was a sound one: it was
to plan for extensions long before they were necessary, but to build
little by little as the premises were needed and money was ready for
the purpose.

About this time many questions arose that had to be settled once
and for all. One was whether the College was to be simply a local
day school, or an institution for the furthering of women’s higher
education generally: another was the government of the College and
the defining of the Principal’s powers: a third was whether the
boarding-houses should become an intrinsic part of the College. Around
all these questions storms arose and the Principal began to feel that
in leaving Cambray House she had left behind her peace and happiness.

The College was finally incorporated under the Companies’ Acts, and the
government of it revised and radically altered. The Principal’s powers
were more clearly defined, and the Council decided to take over full
responsibility for the boarding-houses.

About this last decision she wrote to her friend, Miss Arnold, the
headmistress of the Truro High School:--

“I think I told you that after many years, I have prevailed upon our
Council to take the whole risk of the boarding-houses--the pecuniary
risk is of course very great, and in case of war or sudden depression
I don’t exactly see how we should meet it, but one must have risks and
we find the moral risks of not taking pecuniary ones so great that we
decided for the latter--and indeed we had to pay pretty considerable
sums in law expenses and to get rid of unjust claims too. We could
not _prove_ that these ladies had not lost money, if they said they
had--and if they were bad managers they did perhaps lose--and an outcry
was raised that we ruined poor ladies.”

Of her attitude towards a Principal’s position and powers, part of a
letter from Miss Buss to Miss Ridley gives some idea.

“I had a long and grave talk with Miss Beale, who counsels fight, but
not on any personal ground. She says: ‘Resign if there is interference
with the mistress’s liberty of action. That is a public question and
one of public interest.’ She was so good and loving: she was so tender:
and she is so wise and calm. She told me some of her own worries and
said that sometimes she quivered in every nerve at her own Council
meetings.”

At the end of these various controversies it was realised that the
College could not be a merely local institution, but had a great future
before it, and was destined to play a very important part in the higher
education of women from every part of the country.

I must not close this chapter without giving a brief account of the
much-loved Cambray House, in which the Ladies’ College started. For a
time after the College left it was a boys’ school, but in 1889, Miss
Beale had the chance of re-purchasing it for £2,000 and using it as a
boarding-house and overflow school for girls awaiting admission to the
College. In 1895 it was enlarged, and in 1897 the Principal, by Deed of
Gift, made it over to the College, though she still ran it on her own
account. Not until 1906 was it actually reckoned part of the College.
This is only one of the many instances of how Dorothea Beale spent or
invested her own money for the growth and welfare of the College.




                             CHAPTER VIII.

                             WORK OF LOVE.

 “The fellowship we long for is one in which men shall be themselves
 as well as fellows to each other, in which each shall know his own
 desire, and there shall be a harmony among them because of a holy
 concord in their desires.”--CLUTTON BROCK.


In the year 1880, the College Magazine was started under the editorship
of Dorothea Beale, who remained its editor until her death in 1906. Nor
was she only the editor, but a very frequent contributor: many of her
articles which may be seen collected in book form first appeared in
the Cheltenham Ladies’ College Magazine. The contributors were chiefly
old pupils, though Dorothea Beale sometimes sought contributions from
writers outside College circles. Shortly after the magazine was started
it became a vehicle for news of old pupils, and was a means of binding
past and present students together. It is interesting to see in old
College Magazines the names of those who are now well-known in the
literary world--Beatrice Harraden and others.

The year 1883 was what the pupils called Miss Beale’s “Silver Wedding”:
as she had then been twenty-five years at the College. The Old Girls
were anxious to give her a present on that occasion, and the Principal
asked that they should give something to the College. The gift took the
form of a beautiful organ, to be placed in the First Division Room--the
largest hall at that time--above the Principal’s daïs.

The meeting of Old Girls was fixed for July 6 and 7. Less than a month
before it, Dorothea Beale had the sorrow of losing her great friend,
Mrs. Owen. She went on, as was her wont, with the preparations for the
“silver wedding” assembly, quietly and calmly, not letting her own
private griefs intrude on her public duties.

The Principal received her guests at eight o’clock on Friday evening.
About a thousand old pupils were present. To many of them the building
was quite new, and they were charmed with the beauty of it, decorated
for the occasion by flowers and plants everywhere.

On the Saturday morning she had a large breakfast party, and prayers
were held in the great hall. It must have been a thrilling experience
for Dorothea Beale to hear for the first time so many of her Old Girls
sing, “O God, our help in ages past,” to the accompaniment of the new
organ. After prayers she gave an address, chiefly on music. She spoke
first of the different kinds of music, the noble and the ignoble, the
lofty and the base: the music which, like the song of the lotus-eaters,
lulls us to forget all sense of duty, and obligation to home and
kindred, and that which arouses all our highest powers. She spoke then
of the different music of life, of nature, of faith, of every human
soul.

The end of this speech expressed an idea that had been in her mind for
a long time, that of forming a guild of former pupils. The fundamental
aims of the Guild would be to bind old students to their Alma Mater: to
keep them, by means of the magazine and Old Girls’ meetings, in touch
with one another: to enable them to help one another: and perhaps by
and by to take up some corporate work.

This suggestion of an Old Pupils’ Association was taken up at once, and
a meeting was fixed for the following year.

A year later the Guild was established. The daisy had been chosen as
the emblem of the Guild and a brooch had been devised, the design
combining the flower and the monogram of the College. The guests were
welcomed on Tuesday evening, July 8, 1884, and on Wednesday morning
after prayers Dorothea Beale gave the inaugural address of the Guild.
Her outlook on life was essentially that of the devout poet, who sees
in the visible world the signs and symbols of spiritual truths. To her,
the daisy, the emblem of the Guild, was full of suggestion. She dealt
with allusions to the daisy in our poets, explaining why they loved
this little humble flower. She spoke of its sturdy independence--“You
never see it turning towards other flowers: it can only look up”.
She took the independence of the daisy as a symbol of the friendship
of middle and later life, the friendship which means little direct
intercourse, only the consciousness of a union in spirit and a looking
towards the same ends.

“We have chosen the daisy as our emblem, the single eye, the true
sunflower, the real heliotrope that stands ever gazing upward. It is
changed into an image of the sun himself: it is like a censer ever
burning towards heaven, a speck of heavenly beauty, a star come down to
brighten the dark places of the earth.”

The Guild meetings were held every second year, and were a source
of great pleasure, interest, and inspiration to those who had known
Dorothea Beale as Principal.

“She had a wonderful memory,” writes one of her former pupils, “for
her Old Girls, especially for those who, like me, belonged to the old
days of Cambray House, and could remember the excitement and delight
of going into the new building. I shall never forget the warmth of her
greeting at that last Guild or how at the ‘At Home’ in the evening she
stopped me in the corridor to say, ‘I was told that all five C----’s
were here, and I have only seen four. Where is M----?’ I believe that
there were about 1200 Old Girls there, and to think of her keeping
count like that of those whom she had seen was simply amazing.”

Pupils of a later date, who thought Dorothea Beale had hardly known
them at College, were often astonished to find that their old Principal
not only knew them, but remembered incidents of their College days, or
events which happened afterwards.

An older girl and her sister were both sent to College and the latter
left from the third division because her people left Cheltenham; but
her elder sister, Gertrude, stayed on and eventually joined the Guild.
Years after the younger one met the Principal and went up to speak to
her and, never thinking that she could possibly remember her, meant to
explain who she was. But before she could do so Miss Beale, on seeing
her, began without any preliminaries: “Why has your sister left the
Guild?”

In the year 1876 Miss Margaret Newman had made an offer to Dorothea
Beale that she would start a boarding-house for students who wished
to become teachers and found it difficult to obtain the necessary
training. She offered to pay £75 a year towards expenses, and in
addition to give her time and services. This involved a good deal of
strain and work, as it meant living in a small house with only one
maid, and having in addition the responsibility of the girl students.
At the end of one year Miss Newman became ill and died after a short
illness. Those who knew her felt that death had been hastened by the
devoted work for which she had hardly had sufficient strength. Her
work, however, was not ended. In the brief space of one year Miss
Newman had won such love and affection for herself and such sympathy
with her noble object that people felt her work must go on. It was this
strong feeling which made Dorothea Beale depart from her usual plan
of not asking for money. As soon as she asked, £1200 was immediately
given, half of it by the College staff.

“She had left,” said Dorothea Beale, “a legacy of £100 to carry it on,
and, as has been mentioned, further sums were given by friends, and
about £600 by the College staff. The number of students had steadily
increased, and it was determined by the trustees in whom the management
was vested to build a residential college and trust to the small
profits each year gradually to pay off the debt thereby incurred. They
therefore purchased the site on Bayshill, and arrangements were made
for the erection of the building to designs prepared by Mr. Middleton.
Cheltenham was one of the first colleges to establish training for
Secondary Teachers. After much thought it was decided to call the new
hall of residence St. Hilda’s.

“St. Hilda’s,” said she, “seemed a particularly appropriate ideal for
our students. She was consecrated by Bishop Aidan and made Head of
the most important house of education of her day. She had, Bede tells
us, been diligently instructed by learned men and she was the patron
of our earliest poet, Caedmon. She insisted much that those under her
direction should attend to the reading of the Holy Scriptures. She
taught the strict observance of justice and other virtues, particularly
of peace and charity.”

On November 27, 1885, the building was formally opened. A beautiful
statue of St. Hilda was presented by a brother of some old pupils.
She holds in her hand the Vulgate open at the words “Videmus nunc per
speculum in aenigmate: tune autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco ex
parte: tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum” (1 Cor. xiii. 12).
Over the door are the words of Plato, χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά. On the study
walls are these texts--“Shew Thy servants Thy work and their children
Thy glory”: “Knowledge puffeth up, charity buildeth up”: “Let nothing
be done through strife or vain-glory”.

Seven years later another Saint Hilda’s was established, this time at
Oxford.

Dorothea Beale had for long years realised the enormous advantage
to students of living for a time in the atmosphere of the older
Universities. She thought that a time at Oxford or Cambridge could give
to a student, who had already begun her teaching career, inspiration
and mental stimulus that nothing else could give. Her idea was
that they should have a year for general reading, rather than for
examination work, though those who wished to take examinations should
be allowed to do so.

In 1892, Miss Beale purchased from Dr. Child, Cowley House, Oxford, a
beautifully situated house, overlooking Christ Church meadows. The work
was begun in October, 1893, there being at that time seven students
with Mrs. Burrows as Principal. It was formally opened on November 6,
the mid-term holiday of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, and many of the
staff and pupils went to the opening ceremony.

St. Hilda’s work was soon extended in another direction, not indeed
along Dorothea Beale’s lines, though she was too wise to offer any
opposition. In the year 1888 a meeting of the Guild was held, and the
proposal was made that it should take up some definite outside work.
There were several proposals, but an overwhelming majority of the Guild
decided on the plan of starting a settlement in the East End of London.
As a result of this decision Mayfield House, close to Bethnal Green,
was taken by the Committee. Dorothea Beale was greatly disappointed and
did not conceal the fact. At a General Guild Meeting in alluding to
this subject she said:--

“I trust we shall be able to try to win harmony out of notes not
altogether concordant. Some of us come with a feeling of disappointment
that the scheme we desired has been rejected--I am one of these. I not
only accept my defeat, I feel sure that you have sought guidance of
that inward oracle which must ever be our supreme rule, you have done
what conscience bade and so it is right. As regards my own scheme, I
only allude to it to say that, having now to continue it single-handed,
I cannot help you as much as I could wish, and I just refer to it
to-day in the hope that you will remember it when I am no longer here.”

After some years of work at Mayfield House a house was built specially
for the Guild settlement close to Shoreditch Church. The latter was
opened in 1895. The Guild took up this task in the East End with great
enthusiasm, and many of the members were willing to sacrifice time and
money to help on the work they had undertaken.

Dorothea Beale seems never to have taken kindly to charitable work.
She had a great horror of the demoralisation caused by the giving of
“doles”. Many of her friends thought that she realised little of the
suffering and demoralisation caused by extreme poverty. After a time
she became much more interested in the Guild settlement, realising
what a valuable centre it formed for training young workers. It was
this aspect of the work rather than its charitable purpose that
appealed to her most strongly. All through her life she touched with a
very doubtful hand enterprises connected with giving to individuals.
She felt very strongly that the effect was in almost every case
demoralising. When free meals for necessitous school children were
introduced, she was very much concerned about them, dreading the
weakening of parental responsibility. She knew little of the poor,
however, and of the evil effects of poverty itself, and was in
consequence less harassed by doubts than those of us who see these
social problems following one another in an endless vicious circle.
In this connection one might mention that she never cared much for
scholarships, though as time went on she accepted one or two for
the College, and she herself founded one at Casterton School. She
preferred to lend money to those who wished for training which they
could not afford. During her time at Cheltenham she lent money to many
students: it had to be returned when the student began to earn money,
and in hardly any cases did the student fail to do so. She felt very
strongly that people value much more highly that for which they have to
struggle, and had an almost morbid dread of the demoralising effect of
charity on character.




                              CHAPTER IX.

                  INTERESTS, HONOURS, AND A JOURNEY.

  “Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle to right the wrong.
  Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she:
  Give her the glory of going on and still to be.”

  --TENNYSON.

Those who are called to a great work often pass through times of
darkness, during which they lose for a time their vision of the eternal
realities which have meant everything to them. Dorothea Beale about the
middle of her work at Cheltenham passed through such an experience.
With weak health and clouded faith she strove, however, to live in the
spirit of Matthew Arnold’s lines--

  Tasks in hours of insight willed
  May be through hours of gloom fulfilled,

and only a few intimate friends knew what she suffered at this time.

A few extracts from her journal at this time show something of the ups
and downs of her illness, and the courage with which she fought what
at first she did not realise to be illness. Her diary of 1878 contains
many such entries as:--

 _February 26._--I have idled away precious time, neglected individual
 work. Because my own will is weak I could not strengthen [another].

 _February 27._--In bed all day. There are duties still undone though I
 see death near.

 _February 28._--Not in college. Much time wasted and [I was]
 disobedient to the voice of duty.

 _March 15._--A little more work for my children to-day. I thank Thee
 for some help. May I consecrate time and energies to Thee.

 _April 5._--Tried, but not successfully, with my Confirmation
 children. Feeling too ill to do well. Thy Will be done.

In 1882 she passed through a time of great darkness and depression,
but she finally won through as one of her indomitable spirit was bound
to do.

When this experience had passed Dorothea Beale had changed. Her
religion had become more spiritual; her knowledge of other souls more
intimate; her desire to help those passing through similar experiences,
intense. One of the immediate results of her time of difficulty was
the starting of Quiet Days or Retreats for teachers at Cheltenham at
the end of the summer term, alternatively with the biennial Guild
meetings. To her, a teacher’s work was first and foremost spiritual;
and she realised the need of times of refreshment and re-establishment
in the faith for those who are continually “giving out”. The Quiet Days
she established proved a great help to many teachers from all parts,
and her letters to old pupils and others passing through times of
difficulty reveal a great insight only given by personal experience.

To her friend, Miss Belcher, she wrote:--

“We were all so full of hope at first and are much disappointed that
relief has not come; ... I think, perhaps, you may be specially
suffering for one, that her faith may be once more awakened. Every
sufferer thus ‘lifted up’ does in a measure draw the hearts of others
to Him through whom we are able to reveal the power of faith.”

To another she wrote:--

“I have just heard of this fresh trouble. Surely you must be intended
to do some work for others specially needing heart’s blood. This paper
was put into my hands just as I heard of your fresh disappointment and
anxiety.”

The mediatorial and purifying purpose of suffering is an idea
frequently found in her writing. The South African War was a great
burden on her mind. In 1900 she wrote:--

“It is difficult to keep up one’s active powers with this nightmare;
one is so sure that all suffering is intended to be purifying and we
must glorify God in the fires.”

Dorothea Beale always had a great objection to desultory work, and
though she of necessity touched many interests wider than those of
Cheltenham, she kept the main part of her time and strength for her
own particular work. Her association with various enterprises was
always greatly valued, and her work and influence were felt to be a
great help. Some of the educational work in which she was specially
interested and took a part was represented by the Head-Mistresses’
Association, the Teachers’ Guild, the Froebel Society, the Child Study
Association, the Parents’ National Union, and Sunday Schools. She
would send delegates from the College to consider any new educational
system. A local institution that always claimed her sympathy was a
Working Men’s College started at Cheltenham and greatly helped by her
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Owen. She read a paper there on one occasion, on
self-support and self-government.

“I do not think there are many,” she said, “belonging to this College,
who could not pay a few shillings annually. Self-denial adds value
to energy.... Everybody does not agree with me. Some think you will
misunderstand--think we do not want to help. I do not think you will;
to judge by my own feelings I like to be independent.”

Then she spoke of the early difficulties at the Ladies’ College and the
lack of money during her first years there.

“I am quite sure,” she went on, “that our College would not have been
what it is if we had had money to fall back upon. I might myself have
left the helm and gone to sit quietly in the cabin while the vessel
drifted on to the rocks.”

Dorothea Beale kept throughout life a youthfulness of outlook which
made her able to enthuse over things that strongly attracted her
attention and interest. One day some one brought to her on a lily-leaf
a dragon-fly emerging from the pupa. To her mind, as to Mrs. Gatty’s,
this became a symbol of the resurrection. All that summer the college
heard much of the thought it had suggested, and many were the
“transformations” witnessed. She wrote a paper--“Is Death the End?”
and wanted to read it at a little mission maintained by her friends,
Mr. and Mrs. Owen. They would not allow her to do so, though she was
perfectly sure she would be able to interest the poor people. This
reminds the writer of a similar incident. A lady had given what she
believed to be a thrilling lecture on the dragon-fly to a number of
East End girls. They listened most attentively and seemed greatly
interested. But the lecturer’s self-satisfaction received something of
a shock when at the end she heard one girl say to another in a very
Cockney accent, “Why, it’s nothing but a fly, after all!” Probably Mr.
and Mrs. Owen were right.

Dorothea Beale was not directly interested in missionary work until
the year 1883, when Pundita Ramabai was sent by the Wantage Sisters
to study at Cheltenham College. Under her influence she studied Hindu
religion and philosophy, and became greatly concerned about the
condition of widows in India. When Ramabai established her Home for
Widows at Mukti, Dorothea Beale became a regular and large subscriber.
Among her papers was found an appeal evidently intended to reach the
minds of educated Hindus.

“My heart,” she wrote, “is stirred by sorrow and pity for those
suffering widows of India; but there are some whom I pity more--those
who inflict the sorrow on them, since it is far better to suffer than
to do wrong.... But what grieves me, too, is the thought of the waste
of all that wonderful amount of energy and life that God has given your
country-women in order to bless others.

“If the men of India believe in God’s goodness and wisdom, as I think
they must, even though they may not trust Him, they must think He has
not made all those widows to be a burden and a misery to themselves and
others, but to do good work. What mistakes people make when they think
they are wiser than God.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I can remember when ‘Old Maid’ was a term of contempt in England, but
it is not so now; you have seen me and sixty old maids working together
happy and content, and if I could send out a hundred women where I
can now send one, I should not have too many, so constant are the
demands for ‘old maids,’ as you would call them--for teachers, nurses,
missionaries, and all sorts of good work.... India will some time feel
all that her wasted women’s life can do.”

With regard to missionary work for girls, she was always afraid lest
the glamour and romance of it should tempt them away from obvious
duties at home.

Dorothea Beale, perhaps because of her early acquaintance with Mrs.
Lancaster’s work, was always ready to support any agencies for the
protection of girls and women. As far back as ’86 she wrote:--

“I would ... urge the formation of a body of women-policemen who could
safely do work which could not be undertaken by men-policemen or
clergymen. These should undertake to watch over registries for women,
shops where women work, to establish labour registers themselves and
take care that women were not paid starvation wages; to enter (under
protection) suspected houses; to watch railway stations, shops,” etc.

She was always anxious for the vote to be granted to women, knowing
that many reforms were impossible without it. She was saddened by Mr.
Balfour’s Education Bill of 1902, feeling that by the abolition of
School Boards on which women had been well represented, the cause of
the vote had received a serious “set-back”.

Many other causes received her sympathy and financial help. Agnes
Weston’s work among sailors always appealed to her, as did also all
efforts to set discharged prisoners on their feet again. She had, too,
a warm spot in her heart for sufferers of her own class, impoverished
women teachers and other workers.

Dorothea Beale never cared much for prizes. She felt that the work
ought to be done for the work’s sake, as it indeed was at Cheltenham.
There were prizes given on the examination results and standards
reached, but these were simply fetched by the prize-winners from the
secretary’s room at the beginning of the next term. No emphasis was
laid upon them and they were rather an acknowledgment of good work than
something to be striven for.

The College itself did little to attract public attention. It had no
speech-day to draw celebrities to it, and went on year after year
unnoticed save by those associated with it, and those who had a real
interest in education.

In the eighties, however, outside people began to honour the College in
various ways. John Ruskin was one of the first to do so, by presenting
it with some beautiful old manuscripts and printed books. He often
criticised the College Magazine. On one occasion he hurt the editor
deeply by criticising the verses of a dear friend. To her protest he
replied:--

 “DEAR MISS BEALE,

 “I am grieved very deeply to have written what I did of your dead
 friend’s verses. If you knew how full my own life has been of sorrow,
 how every day of it begins with a death-knell, you would bear with me
 in what I will yet venture to say to you as the head of a noble school
 of women’s thought, that no personal feelings should ever be allowed
 to influence you in what you permit your scholars either to read or to
 publish.”

And again, a little later:--

 “DEAR MISS BEALE,

 “So many thanks, and again and again I ask your pardon for the pain I
 gave you. I had no idea of the kind of person you were, I thought you
 were merely clever and proud.

                                  “These substituted verses are lovely.
                                                “Ever gratefully yours,
                                                                “J. R.”

In 1889 and 1900, the Ladies’ College won gold medals for its
educational exhibits at the Paris Exhibitions. In 1894 Dorothea
Beale was called to give evidence before another Royal Commission
for inquiring into the condition of girls’ schools. In 1897, the
Empress Frederick visited the college, and in 1899 Princess Henry of
Battenberg, the latter to unveil a marble bust of Queen Victoria.

In the year 1898 there was an outbreak of smallpox in England. It was
particularly bad in Gloucestershire, and five times it broke out in
Cheltenham.

“Cheltenham,” says Mrs. Raikes, “largely owed its immunity to the
exertions of the Lady Principal, who insisted on re-vaccination where
it was necessary for every one connected with the college. This meant
not only teachers, pupils, servants, but all who had to do with any
college girl in any capacity--all in the homes of the day-pupils--all
in the shops which served the boarding-houses--the whole railway staff
at the different stations. The College custom was too good to lose and
she carried her point. Such a drastic measure had its comic side, as
was perceived by the saucy butcher boy, who shouted to a boarding-house
cook, “I must know if you are vaccinated before I deliver this meat”.

The father of a girl who had an important examination in a few weeks
refused to allow her to be vaccinated. The Head refused to keep her,
and a cab was actually at the door to take her away when a telegram
came from the girl’s father--“May do as she pleases”--which took away
the necessity for the cab.

For personal honours Dorothea Beale cared not at all, but she valued
them because they reflected glory on the College. Towards the end of
her life many honours were bestowed upon her. She was greatly honoured
at the International Congresses of Education held in Paris in 1889.
Later she was made Officier de l’Académie, and in 1890, the Société
des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes held its meeting at Cheltenham.
Durham University next conferred upon her the distinction of Tutor in
Letters. In 1898 she was elected a Corresponding Member of the National
Educational Association, U.S.A. An honour unusual for a woman was
conferred on Dorothea Beale, in 1901, when she received the freedom of
the Borough of Cheltenham. In the words of the Town Council resolution
it was decreed:--

 “That in recognition of the great work she has done for the education
 of women in England, and especially of the unique position to which
 under her direction the Cheltenham Ladies’ College has attained among
 the educational institutions of the country, Miss Dorothea Beale be,
 in pursuance and exercise of the Honorary Freedom of the Boroughs’
 Act, 1885, admitted to the Honorary Freedom of this Borough.”

Dorothea Beale in her reply said:--

 “To invite a woman to be a Freeman of a town is, I venture to believe,
 an expression of the thought that not the individual, but the family
 with its twofold life, is the true unit and type of the State, that
 social and civil and national prosperity depend on the communion of
 labour, and that the ideal commonwealth is realised only in proportion
 as the dream of one of our poets is fulfilled, and men and women

        ‘Walk this world
  Yoked in all exercise of noble ends.’”


Shortly after this she was co-opted a member of the Advisory Board of
the University of London.

The highest honour Dorothea Beale received came in 1902. It was an
invitation from the University of Edinburgh to receive the LL.D.
degree. Her students and staff were delighted, and the latter
determined to present her with her robes. These were the most beautiful
and costly they could procure. The degree was conferred in the McEwan
Hall of the University. Others who received the degree at the same time
were the Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Alverstone), Mr. Asquith,
Mr. Austin Dobson, Sir John Batty Tuke, and Dr. Rucker, Principal of
the University of London. Only once before had the University conferred
this honour on a woman.

Sir Ludovic Grant in summing up Dorothea Beale’s claim to a national
recognition gave an excellent epitome of her work:--

“No feature of the national progress during the last fifty years is
more remarkable than the revolution which has transformed our girls’
schools from occidental zenanas into centres of healthy activity. In
the great crusade which has been crowned with this most desirable
consummation the foremost champion was the cultured and intrepid
lady who guides the destinies of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. It
was largely due to Miss Beale’s indomitable advocacy on platform and
on paper, that the barriers of parental prejudice were broken down,
that the ancient idols, venerated by a former generation--Mangnall,
Pinnock, and Lindley Murray--were shattered, and that barren catechism
and lifeless epitome were compelled to give place to fructifying
studies, and the futile promenade to invigorating recreations. I need
not remind you that Miss Beale’s apostolic ardour is equalled by her
administrative abilities. When she went to Cheltenham her pupils were
counted by tens: to-day they are to be counted by hundreds, and the
institution in respect of organisation and educational efficiency will
bear comparison with the best of the great English public schools.
Among the collateral benefits resulting from the great movement for
the higher education of women, in which Miss Beale has played so
conspicuous a part, not the least important is the power which the
Scotch Universities have obtained of conferring their honorary degrees
upon women, and therefore it is with no ordinary satisfaction that
the University of Edinburgh now exercises this power by begging Miss
Beale’s acceptance of an honour which has been brought within the reach
of her sex largely through her own endeavours.”

She wrote to the Vice-Principal a delightful account of the ceremony,
which she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed.

“I am persuaded,” said she, “that my robes were far superior to any
other.” From Edinburgh she went to Glasgow where she found herself in
the midst of “Old Girls”.

“We are often in spirit in Cheltenham,” wrote she, “and I must send
you a few last words to wish you all very happy holidays.... On Monday
a large number of distinguished people were invited to meet us, and
yesterday afternoon we had a party of about thirty Cheltonians. In the
evening we dined with Professor and Mrs. George Adam Smith. I sat next
to Professor Jones, who has written a book on Browning, and on the
other side was the Rector, Dr. Story.... I think we shall come back
refreshed and with some new ideas.”

She went from Glasgow to stay with other old pupils in Scotland,
then to Newcastle, where she was asked to launch a ship. She
evidently thought this would be a very damp proceeding and arrived
in india-rubber shoes and a dress thoroughly looped up. “Much as she
disliked adventure,” says Mrs. Raikes, “she was prepared to march into
the Tyne if the glory of the Ladies’ College demanded it.”

This three weeks’ tour she thoroughly enjoyed, and came back refreshed
and strengthened and warmed in heart by the love and kindness of her
“Old Girls” and the appreciation shown her everywhere.

In the autumn of 1902 she was compelled to give up work for a time. Her
sight was causing anxiety and she was not allowed either to read or
to write. Miss Berridge went with her to Bath and wrote of their life
together:--

“We brought with us Adam Smith’s work on the “Minor Prophets” and
also Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”. At first we stuck to the “Prophets,”
but at last Jane got a hearing and since then she has utterly
ousted the “Prophets”. It has been rather amusing to note how many
excellent reasons there were for giving Jane the preference. Miss
Beale was--tired--or sleepy--or not very well and could not attend
to anything that required thought, or it was near lunch--or tea--or
supper-time and therefore it was not worth while, etc., etc., and I
think she has really liked the story very much.... Miss Beale is very
much better, though of course far from being her former energetic self.
But we have still more than a fortnight before us and if she makes as
much progress in that time as she has done in the fortnight just gone,
we may be very well satisfied.”

She recovered wonderfully and was back at her work at the end of term.
But from this time she seems to have realised the need for greater care
of her health and the next summer she took a “Kur” at Oeynhausen.

It was about this time that those who knew and loved Dorothea Beale
began to realise that some day the great Head would be removed and
that there was no worthy memorial of her: no portrait which would
remind her “children” of their school mother, and would speak to future
generations of the Foundress to whom they owed so much.

The Council first approached her through their chairman, Sir Samuel
Johnson. She suggested in reply that Miss Stirling, who had a modelling
class at the College, should model her portrait in clay or terra-cotta.

After this the Council’s request took the form of a resolution. To
this Dorothea Beale replied that she had a very great objection to a
portrait of herself being hung up during her life: that it would use up
funds needed for improvements in the College, and that it would give
people an exaggerated idea of the work that she had been allowed to do
for the College.

Again she suggested that Miss Stirling should make a model in clay,
which could be executed in stone by Mr. Martyn.

The final appeal was made by the Guild meeting of 1902, after which
Dorothea Beale surrendered, and allowed her portrait to be painted by
Mr. J. J. Shannon. In her reply to those who were so desirous of having
a worthy memorial of their revered and loved Principal, she said:--

“The unbiassed artist represents his subject as she is, not as she
seems to be to those who are good enough to overlook her defects and
love her in spite of them.”

Whilst the Principal was sitting for Mr. Shannon, various friends
read aloud to her. “Lorna Doone” was one of the books. It “amused the
painter,” Dorothea Beale said.

The portrait, a very attractive one, was presented by the Duchess of
Bedford on November 8, 1904. In Dorothea’s Beale’s reply, she said that
she looked on the desire for a portrait as one not for a person but for
a Principal, a representative who would live on long after the person
had passed away. The illuminated book containing the names of the
donors she looked upon as a personal gift.

The College Jubilee celebrations were held in May, 1905. Lord
Londonderry opened a large new wing for science teaching, and
well-known people spoke at this gathering, which was the only public
Commemoration the college had had.




                              CHAPTER X.

                    SOME CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS.

 “Universal History ... is at bottom, the History of the Great Men who
 have worked here.”--CARLYLE.


Dorothea Beale is one of the few people to whom we can apply the
adjective great. As one reads the story of her life this quality is
very clearly marked. She was great in her thoughts, great in her plans,
great in her deeds. It is impossible to define greatness, but it is a
quality that is easily recognisable by those who have the power to see.

She had a well-balanced brain, an extremely desirable possession in
an educationalist. Whether she would have done superlatively good
work in one subject, had she specialised, it is impossible to say,
but she certainly did extremely good work in many subjects--History,
Mathematics, Philosophy, Languages--to mention only a few. Such
all-round capacity is very valuable in a Head Mistress, as it enables
her to judge fairly the teaching that is being given in almost every
subject. Intellectually she was abnormally active: rest was to her an
impossibility, and up to the end of her life she kept this marvellous
mental energy. The amount of work she was able to do was prodigious:
her administrative duties, her teaching, her literary essays--she wrote
a considerable amount--her vast correspondence, implied a mass of work
that few people could get through. Her great powers made it rather
difficult for her to understand people of limited capacity, though she
tried to do so. Dorothea Beale was a great organiser. Teachers who
went to the Ladies’ College from other schools were amazed at the
perfect organisation, and were greatly impressed by the way in which
Dorothea Beale kept in touch with everything. She was like a centre to
which were attached invisible wires from every girl and every teacher.
One of her leading ideas was to work through her staff. She knew she
could accomplish infinitely more with their sympathy and help than by
trying to do things herself. A piece of advice she frequently offered
to her teachers was to get others to do anything they could, so as to
leave their own energies for the essential part of their work, the part
that no one else could do. The doctrine of conservation of energy she
preached much to her staff. She dreaded for them the exhausting effect
of even too much enthusiasm. Holidays, she said, were to be used for
the refreshment of body, mind, and soul: and she advised them to avoid
anything that might impair their health.

Her humour was subtle and not always understood. She frequently said
most humorous things with a perfectly grave face, so that people who
did not understand her often quoted her jokes to prove her lack of
humour. One day she said to the girls that she believed her friend,
Mr. X., always made a plan of learning poetry while he shaved, and she
commended it to them as a practice they should all immediately follow!

As life went on, I believe, Dorothea Beale became rather unpractical in
personal matters, and when she had to do things for herself did them
with difficulty. Happily she usually had some one to look after her.

“I had a great deal of talk with her,” wrote one of her Old Girls, “at
one of the Head Mistresses’ Conferences, and I remember her giving me
such an amusing account of her attempts to blow up an air-cushion for
herself, that we both laughed until the tears ran down our faces.”

At the age of sixty-seven Dorothea Beale took to cycling. At first
she attempted a bicycle, but this was somewhat difficult at that
advanced age, so she took the advice of her friends and rode, instead,
a tricycle. Most mornings about seven o’clock she was to be seen riding
along the Cheltenham streets. “The milkmen know how to keep out of my
way,” she used laughingly to say. The tricycle was a source of great
pleasure to her, as it enabled her to get out easily and quickly into
quiet country, where she could enjoy the beauty and solitude of nature.

Her writing became rather illegible, though in youth it was good. There
is a story told of her which sounds to me rather the kind of anecdote
that is applied to different people in succession. After a Scripture
class a girl received back a written exercise with a remark by Dorothea
Beale at the end. The girl gazed at the remark, looking at it in every
possible way, but could not decipher it. The book was handed round the
class, but no one could read the red-ink hieroglyphics. Finally some
genius hit on the interpretation--“Write legibly!”

The living monument of Dorothea Beale’s work is a testimony to her
greatness of soul, her patience and her power to wait. Yet, curiously
enough, she was in smaller things often very impetuous: sometimes she
forgot decisions made hastily and difficulties ensued.

All her life Dorothea Beale had to fight against extreme sensitiveness
and shyness. She, who never shrank from any duty, however difficult,
often shrank from the society of those who might be unsympathetic,
and was sorely wounded by adverse criticism. Yet in a larger sense,
she did not trouble about the judgment of others, accustomed as she
was throughout life to submit herself to a Higher Judge. She found
it difficult to make advances to other people and always welcomed
the fearless, happy girls who ventured to treat her as a comrade and
friend. No doubt this sensitiveness helped her much in her dealings
with others. It gave her the power of sympathising, especially in times
of sorrow and difficulty: one has only to read some of her letters to
see how powerful she was in this way. A few extracts will illustrate
this point:--

“I need not tell you I have felt much for you. One could not have
wished the suffering prolonged, and yet one does not feel the loss
less. Happily, one seems generally to forget, when all is over, the
last painful incidents of the sickness, and to remember the past years.
Few have had a more devoted mother. How proud she was of your success!”

To another, on her father’s death:--

“I must write you one line of sympathy in this great sorrow. I know how
much you loved your dear father and had longed for this visit, and now
there will be a great blank. You will not think now, ‘how glad he will
be if I do well’.”

To one going through great spiritual struggle:--

“Indeed, dear child, I do feel for you. When you are freer you must
come and see me and we will talk over things. I shall not think you
wicked but believe that you do want to know God, and that He is sorry
for you because you do care, but cannot see.”

To her dear friend, Miss Belcher, when the latter was suffering from
the illness which was to bring the end:--

“I am looking forward to Friday. I thought of you so much on this the
Physician’s [St. Luke’s] day as we sang that beautiful Hymn and Psalm
xxx: and our window told of the raising of the daughter by the Healer.”

Dorothea Beale presented the perhaps not unusual combination of the
practical woman of affairs and the mystic. Her business capacity and
power of organisation were remarkable, and yet she had essentially the
mind of a poet. Hers was the type of mind that is continually seeing
a revelation of the spiritual in all material things, in history, in
literature, and in sympathy with kindred souls.

Her Scripture lessons she considered one of the chief parts of her
work. She always took the greatest care with her preparation for these
classes and made them the subject of prayer. Some used to complain that
her lessons were vague, and not intelligible, but even those who did
not understand felt a greatness and an uplifting power which were a
help to them.

In 1880 she wrote to a young teacher. “I used to prepare my lessons on
my knees (don’t say this to others). You would find it a help, I think,
to do this sometimes.”

Her literature lessons were rather unusual. She dealt with the great
writers in a great way, and used these lessons for conveying moral
teaching that could not very well be given in Scripture lessons.
Browning she loved, and her senior girls never left school without
having been introduced by Dorothea Beale to some of his great, shorter
poems. Her book on Literary Studies gives one an idea of how she
dealt with literature in her classes. There is in this book a very
interesting dialogue, between a person of the seventeenth and one of
the nineteenth century on the theology of “Paradise Lost”. After an
interesting discussion on the different conceptions of God and His ways
the seventeenth century representative says:--

“You do not do justice to us. You do not think Bunyan meant us to
believe Christian took a real journey away from a particular town. Why
do you suppose Milton meant that Satan was thrown out of a special
place in this, which we call space? You do not think that the Red Cross
Knight was believed by Spenser, or Christian by Bunyan, to have been
immersed in a dark dungeon.”

On the subject of marriage Dorothea Beale had very high ideals. She
urged girls to become independent by their own efforts, so that they
should never be tempted to a mercenary marriage. She was very scornful
of the type of modern novel that represents men and women as slaves of
their passions, unrestrained by the bonds of marriage or the claims of
morality. Before she finally accepted her vocation Dorothea Beale was
herself for a short time engaged to be married: but the engagement came
to an end, and the work of a great school, instead of a quiet home,
became her part in life.

Her literary activities were considerable. She wrote on a good many
subjects, but chiefly on those connected with her work. Some of her
essays were published in the College Magazine, others in periodicals.
All her work gives one much food for thought.

The Bishop of Stepney, at the memorial service held for Dorothea Beale
in St. Paul’s Cathedral, gave a very true epitome of the things that
Dorothea Beale stood for.

“She gave a proof that the personality of a teacher was the most
indispensable and enduring power in education. The main object of all
her work at Cheltenham and elsewhere was not so much to instruct the
mind as to inspire the character. She held before herself a clear ideal
of what a cultivated woman ought to be, strong and self-controlled,
filling her life with the highest interests, developing herself to the
utmost for the glory of God and the service of man.”




                              CHAPTER XI.

                           ANOTHER JOURNEY.

  “The King there in His beauty
    Without a veil is seen:
  It were a well-spent journey
    Though seven deaths lay between.”

  --“Hymn from the last words of Samuel Rutherford.”


To those whose life is extended to even the lower limit of the
Psalmist, the world becomes rather sad and lonely. Gradually, one by
one, friends and relations of their own generation pass away, and there
are few left with the same memories and the same outlook. Dorothea
Beale enjoyed perhaps one of the greatest blessings life can give,
that of being able to work until the end. Like all energetic souls
she wished to die “in harness,” and that wish was granted. But on the
personal side her life had become very lonely, though it was brightened
by the love of her “children”.

Some months before the end she was haunted by the suspicion of fatal
disease, but of this others knew nothing. In the Guild meeting of 1906
there hovered the feeling that perhaps it was the last over which the
loved Principal, now old and frail, would preside. “Old Girls” linger
affectionately on her last speech; it was full of humorous touches, and
ripples of laughter were continually passing through the audience. In
it she made her appeal for greater earnestness, greater devotion, so
that all the Guild members might be able to say--using the motto of St.
Hilda’s, Oxford--_Non frustra vixi._

In the holidays she did a good deal of work connected with the College
and began term as usual, though some who knew her well realised that
she was hardly fit for the strain of her work.

Her “Old Girls” linger lovingly on that last term. On the first day
she gave, as she usually did, a short address to the teachers and
children. She spoke on one of her favourite themes--the Parable of
the Talents--and dwelt chiefly on the joy and privilege of being
fellow-workers with God.

On October 16, Dorothea Beale had to go to a College Council Meeting
in London. By accident, she missed Miss Alice Andrews whom she was to
meet at Oxford and went up to London alone. As soon as she arrived in
London she went to see her doctor, an “Old Girl,” Dr. Aldrich Blake.
The doctor confirmed her worst suspicions and recommended an immediate
operation. Later, she wrote about this visit:--

“On Tuesday (October 16) I went up to London hurriedly at 6.37, full
of the thought of what was before me. I went straight to Dr. Aldrich
Blake, an old pupil. She condemned me. Then I saw, as I had arranged, a
new attendant. I looked into shops and felt giddy, and went on to the
place of meeting, where I saw two others, and lastly several friends.”

After this she proceeded to the Council meeting, where she read her
annual report with no sign of fatigue. On her return to Cheltenham Dr.
Cardew confirmed Dr. Aldrich Blake’s opinion, and it was arranged that
she should enter a local nursing home on October 22. Up to the last
moment she did her work, taking prayers, her Scripture lesson--which
struck the girls as a most remarkable one--and doing her corrections
until the end of that day. Some few friends knew of the trial that
awaited her and to one or two others she expressed the doubt whether
she would ever return. After the operation all went well, until Sunday,
the 28th, when she became obviously worse. She rallied somewhat,
however, but the day after nervous prostration set in and after that
there was practically no hope. Mrs. Raikes tells very vividly the story
of the morning at Cheltenham (November 9) when the bulletin was issued
“Miss Beale is sinking”:--

“‘We went through the morning,’ says Miss Sturge, ‘feeling like Elisha,
“Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head
to-day? Yea, I know it, hold ye your peace!”’”

Not in Cheltenham only but far and wide her children were praying
for her: watching for news, and remembering and repeating to each
other things she had said. It was stormy weather, and more than one
thought of Wordsworth’s lines--lines which she had often read to her
class--written when he was expecting to hear of the death of Charles
James Fox:--

  A power is passing from the earth
  To breathless nature’s dark abyss!

Dorothea Beale died on Friday, November 9, at 12.15 during college
hours. It was thought best that the girls should hear of her death
before leaving. When all were assembled in the Princess Hall the
Vice-Principal said:--

“It has pleased God to take from us our beloved Principal.” In a
few words she told the history of the last few days, and then said:
“We feel that it is what she would have desired--no long waiting in
suffering or helplessness, but to go home straight from her work with
her splendid powers scarcely impaired:--

  Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
  Or knock the breast: no weakness, no contempt,
  Dispraise or blame: nothing but well and fair
  And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

‘The readiness is all.’ Let us bear our grief with calmness and
dignity. We know that it would be her wish that work should go on as
usual.... We believe that love lives on, and that the noble work she
did for fifty years has done much for England and for womanhood, and
that not only we who have been blessed by her gracious presence, but
generations also to come shall reap the fruit of her toil and rise up
and call her blessed. Let us pray.”

Then followed a thanksgiving adapted from the form of Memorial Service
issued by authority in January, 1901, after the death of Queen Victoria.

Dorothea Beale had prepared for death as she had prepared for life and
had left instructions that her “perishable body” should be cremated so
as not to be a source of disease to others, and that those who loved
her should not buy any flowers for her funeral, but could if they
wished, bring a few wild flowers or some from their own gardens, but
she did not wish any wholesale destruction of life.

Her body was buried in Gloucester Cathedral, where the funeral took
place on November 16. Eight hundred girls then at the College came
voluntarily and walked silently in twos from the station to the
Cathedral, which was crowded largely with former pupils.

At the same time a Memorial Service was held in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

In other churches in different parts of the country thanks were offered
for the life and work of Dorothea Beale. Many newspapers published true
and beautiful appreciations of her work, life, and character, and all
felt that a great leader had gone from the earth.

So in honour passed away one whose work had small beginnings: who
through difficulty, misunderstanding and prejudice pursued the vision
she saw in youth and lived to see, as perhaps few do see, her dream
realised. Such as Dorothea Beale can never die. She lives still in her
College at Cheltenham, and in the great work carried on there: in her
“children,” who in many lands and many spheres of work still live in
the spirit of their great Head: and in the grateful remembrance of all
women who have been able without hindrance to quench their thirst at
the fount of knowledge.




                             CHAPTER XII.

                       THE VOCATION OF TEACHING.

 “The power of any life lies in its expectancy.”--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

 “Usefulness is the rent we pay for room upon the earth.”--DOROTHEA
 BEALE.


It is only thirteen years since Dorothea Beale passed over to the other
side to enter on the greater service which we believe is granted to all
who toil here in singleness of heart. In her theories of education, in
her outlook on life, she was of our day. Her methods of teaching are
still employed in our best schools, and the teacher can still find her
essays on teaching suggestive and helpful.

Yet we live in another world. Since August 1914, we have passed through
experiences that have changed for ever the values of things. Nothing
can ever be the same again. We of our generation are faced not with
one little difficulty or another but with the building of a new world.
The old civilisation lies in dust at our feet. With it have gone many
things that were very dear to us, our security, our comfort, our
national serenity, our happy-go-lucky individualism. With it, too, have
gone the best of our young manhood, those on whom much of the work of
the immediate future was to rest.

Nor is it without significance that to women at this hour have come for
the first time direct power in politics and opportunity to do any work
of which they are capable. On them must fall the work that the dead and
disabled would have done. To the men of England and of other countries
came the call to give their lives: to the women no less comes the same
call.

Perhaps the greatest need of the world just now is work: not only
for the production of material necessities, but for its steadying,
sanity-restoring power. After four years of the passions and sorrows of
war, mankind has not yet regained its mental balance; and in honest,
steady work, it will perhaps most surely win again the gift it has lost.

In the building of a new world there is no force so great as that of
education in its many aspects, the most important of which is that of
the home. Teachers realise that what is done at school is as nothing
compared with the enormous power of home education, composed as it is
of all the influences of early childhood. Parents must always be the
chief educators, and for this reason parenthood must be one of the most
sacred of human relationships and one of the highest callings. It is
at home a child learns to look at the great things of life from the
right or the wrong angle: it is at home he learns to reverence the good
and the true or to hold them in contempt. Parenthood requires a great
preparation of heart and soul, for it brings with it the greatest
of all responsibilities, that of guiding human souls into the right
pathway.

Of late years the need for teachers has been great, the supply being
less than the demand. Many teachers are still needed, and to the girl
of intellectual interests and power who is seeking a profession, the
question may well arise, whether she should adopt that of a teacher.
There are many matters to be faced in considering this.

Teaching brings with it few of the rewards for which the ordinary
person craves. Financially, its prizes are few: for the most part
it is a badly-paid profession, especially considering the years of
training it involves. It brings with it little renown. Even the
greatest teachers are known in a comparatively narrow circle, at any
rate during their lives. Praise and appreciation are almost unknown,
whilst criticism is given, as was the medicine of last century, in
large doses and at frequent intervals. If it is properly done, the work
is hard. Real teaching implies ceaseless learning. It is imperative
to keep a mind open to all new thought and new ideas, not only in the
educational work but in the world at large. It is necessary, too, to
acquire the wisdom to deal with what is new, so that to some extent
the true may be separated from the false, the lofty from the base. It
is a work, moreover, that is a perpetual test of character, worth, and
spirit. There are no teachers worthy of the name, who do not frequently
shrink from the magnitude of their task and tremble at their own lack
of power. The teacher is called to incessant mental and spiritual work.
Only as he or she lives an active life in mind and soul can he hope to
have any success in training the young for life.

But the chief question after all is that of personal fitness. There are
two essentials; the first is a love of children; the second is some
love of study and of teaching. There can be no good work done without
love of the children we teach: a teacher who does not love children
would probably be serving God better if she were breaking stones by the
roadside. The love of the work itself increases as time goes on. As a
rule the desire to teach indicates some aptitude for the work; though
between the eager expectancy of the untried student and the quiet joy
of the skilled teacher, lie many dark valleys which must perforce be
passed. This, however, is not peculiar to teaching. It is common to all
work of a personal nature, in fact is inherent in all high living.

For those who wish to teach, the great problem arises: “What kind of
teaching shall I undertake?” It is a difficult one to solve.

In England the different kinds of teaching for girls are very clearly
defined. Socially, educational establishments are pretty clearly
differentiated. There is the elementary school for the children of
those whom, for want of a better name, we call the people. Next, the
high school or secondary school, largely for the children of the middle
classes. Lastly, the public school for the boys and the public or
private school for the girls of the wealthy and the aristocracy. These
all usually have their kindergarten or preparatory departments which
offer attractive work to those gifted in dealing with little children.

There is a great need to-day of real peace. International war, hardly
ended, has been succeeded by internal strife of a very serious nature:
at the root of this lies much deep bitterness, the result of the
failure of the different classes of the community to understand one
another. If a number of girls of the middle and upper classes, who feel
that they are called to the work of teaching, would take up work in the
Elementary Schools or the new Continuation Schools, it would do much, I
believe, to bring about a better understanding between class and class.
In this way each would get to know something of the other and the
ideals and knowledge of those who have had greater advantages would
begin to permeate our national life.

Dorothea Beale tried at one time of her work to establish a school of
training for such teachers, but the difficulties put in her way by the
Government of that day made the continuation of the work impossible.
With an educationalist at the Board of Education many difficulties have
been and will be removed, and elementary teaching with smaller classes,
higher pay, and better buildings, is made more possible for those who
wish to embark on it. It is useless, however, to take up this work
unless one has in one’s heart a great love for little children, whether
dirty or clean, ragged or well-cared for. The elementary schools have
not yet adopted the high school system of morning lessons and afternoon
preparation, and this makes the hours of teaching long. The corrections
and necessary preparation are usually less than in a high school: the
holidays are shorter, but are gradually being lengthened.

Some, however, are quite incapable of understanding those outside
their own social class: and such would be foolish to attempt work in
the elementary schools. They would do better in high, secondary, or
boarding schools. The last are not popular amongst present day girl
teachers, largely because of the restrictions. Yet in a boarding school
a true teacher has opportunities which never come into a day-school
teacher’s life. In many ways it is a much more satisfactory sphere,
provided the Head realises that no teacher can do good work without
ample leisure and opportunity for a life of her own apart from the
school. More and more are our generation realising that outside
interests are absolutely essential for a teacher if he or she is going
to be a person of real power and influence. Apart from the knowledge
of one’s own subject there is nothing so necessary in a teacher as a
knowledge of life; not simply the life of the schoolroom, but of life
in its many branches. It is often said that unmarried women teachers
never grow up. They pass from school to college, and from college back
to school, and never quite lose the schoolgirl point of view. It is
often the greatest boon to a teacher to be obliged to give up her own
work for a year or two at some period of her life and to live in a
world where people do not measure time by terms or mark out the day by
bells. But in any case a teacher can always have some interest that has
nothing to do with teaching and has no direct bearing on her work. Such
interests do much to prevent overstrain.

The training for teaching is very thorough and long. That for secondary
or high school work is usually expensive; but the cost of training for
elementary school teaching is much less, as the Government have their
own training colleges. After January, 1921, all teachers registered
by the Government will have to be trained not only educationally but
in the art of teaching. Degrees, now, are almost a _sine quâ non_, or
are at any rate very desirable. All universities admit women to their
degree examinations, though Oxford and Cambridge do not yet grant
degrees.

It is a profession where a good standard of health is desirable, though
people of a sensitive, nervous temperament are often the best teachers.
A tired teacher is, _ipso facto_, a failure: it is, therefore, work in
which the preservation of freshness of mind and body becomes a special
duty. In the best schools the hours of teaching are short, and long
holidays, wisely spent, ought to keep the health vigorous. The right
use of holidays is frequently overlooked, especially by young teachers,
who often spend them in the fulfilment of claims as strenuous as their
work, and return to school used-up and unfit for their duties--a form
of dishonesty not always recognised as such.

In considering teaching as a possible calling the advantages of the
long holidays are worthy of consideration. They give opportunities of
friendship, life with one’s own family, travel, study, and pleasures of
many kinds. It is good, too, in these busy days that a few people have
intervals of leisure in which they have time to sympathise with others,
and to think of the little things of life that are in reality the great
things. Holidays may be the greatest boon not only to oneself, but to
all the people one meets.

Particulars about the training for teaching are to be found in many
books. Two which come readily to my mind are “The Teacher’s Year Book”
and “The Englishwoman’s Year Book”. The registrars of the different
universities are always glad to supply particulars if asked. The Board
of Education will give details about elementary school teaching: these
change somewhat every few years. There are many helps for those who
intend to be teachers, the chief being the scholarships offered by the
different colleges to those who could not without aid afford the fees.
This is especially true of some of the newer universities. Many large
schools also offer help to their pupils who have the ability and desire
to go on to the universities.

To the girl who feels in her the desire to teach, and has the power
necessary for the task, I should say, “Accept your work, and I am sure
you will have no reason to regret your decision.” For with all its
hardships, all its endless striving after impossible ideals, it is a
work which can really be one’s life: and surely such work is always the
happiest.

It has many joys. There are few in life greater than that of seeing
gradually awaken in a child interest and keenness where before there
has been apathy and dullness. To be able to give life to dry bones of
knowledge, to rouse from its torpor the still sleeping mind, to turn
the faces of the children we teach towards the light is surely well
worth doing.

It has many opportunities. The teacher’s task is not to teach
opinions, but to lay the foundations of sound moral standards on which
all true opinion must rest.

The world needs teachers: not the perfunctory worker who takes up
one of the most sacred of callings as a means of livelihood, but the
teacher who is willing to consecrate herself for the work.

At the end of that powerful novel of Robert Herrick’s, “The Healer,”
is a vivid scene. The old doctor, whose gift had been lost through the
exacting claims of an unsuitable marriage, is walking arm-in-arm with a
young student. The older man has recognised in the younger the power he
himself once had, the gift of healing. Very affectionately he lays his
hand on the lad’s shoulder.

“Remember,” he says--I quote from memory--“this gift of yours will
demand whole-hearted devotion and will be satisfied with nothing less
than your life.”

So with the work of teaching. It is a profession that demands
whole-hearted devotion. To those who give to it their lives it brings
many joys, great opportunities, and the satisfaction that constant
giving alone bestows. It has many dangers and many temptations, but
these lose much of their power over the teacher who tries to realise in
practice as well as in theory:--

“That the influence of personal character has been from the first the
great means of bearing truth into men’s hearts.”




                             BIBLIOGRAPHY.


 Raikes. “Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham.” Constable.

 Beale. “Addresses to Teachers.” Longmans.

 Beale. “Studies in Literature, New and Old.” Longmans.

 Beale, Soulsby, and Dove. “Work and Play in Girls’ Schools.” Longmans.

 “Reports issued by the Schools’ Inquiry Commission on the Education
 of Girls. Reprinted with extracts from the evidence and a paper by D.
 Beale.” 1864.

 Beale. “On the Education of Girls.” (Paper read at Social Science
 Congress, 1865.)

 _The Times._ November, 1906. January, 1907.

 _Cheltenham Ladies’ College Magazine._ 1880 and onwards.




              A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EDUCATIONAL WORKS.


 Basil Matthews (Editor). “Essays in Vocation.” Humphrey Milford. 3s.
 (A second and third series are in course of preparation.)

 Thring. “The Theory and Practice of Teaching.”

 Thring. “Education and School.” Macmillan. 6s.

 Thring. “Teaching, Learning, and Life.” Allenson. 1s.

 James. “Talks to Teachers.”

 Paget. “The Hallowing of Work.” Rivington. 2s.

 Clutton Brock. “The Ultimate Belief.” Constable. 2s.

 Kidd. “The Science of Power.” Methuen. 6s.

 Holmes. “What is and What might be.” Constable. 4s. 6d.

 Holmes. “In Defence of What is and What might be.” Constable. 4s. 6d.

 Montessori. “The Montessori Method.” Heinemann. 7s. 6d.

 Mumford. “The Dawn of Religion in the Mind of the Child.” Longmans. 1s.

 Macmillan. “The Camp School.” Allen & Unwin. 3s. 6d. Also “The Child
 and the State.” Nat. Labour Press.

 Eileen Power, M.A. “A Bibliography for Teachers of History.” Women’s
 International League. 2s.

 Pollard. “Educational Value of the Study of History.” Leaflet 36. 6d.
 (Historical Association, 22 Russell Square.)

 Dewey. “Schools of To-morrow.” Dent. 5s.

 Hughes. “Citizens to be.” Constable. 4s. 6d.

 Paton. “The Child and the Nation.” S.C.M. 1s.

 Richmond. “Education for Liberty.” Collins, 6s.

 Simpson. “An Adventure in Education.” Sidgwick & Jackson, 3s. 6d.

 A. C. Benson (and others). “Cambridge Essays on Education.” Camb. Univ.
 Press. 8s.

 Welton. “The Psychology of Education.” MacMillan & Co.

 Welton. “What do we mean by Education?” MacMillan & Co. 7s. 6d.

 Paul. “Some Christian Ideals in the Teaching Profession.” Student
 Christian Movement. 3s.

 Hayward & Freeman. “The Spiritual Foundations of Reconstruction.” P.
 S. King & Sons. 10s. 6d.

 Nunn. “Education, its Data and First Principles.” Arnold. 6s.

 Richmond. “The Curriculum.” Constable. 5s.


                    ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.



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