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Title: Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham

Author: Elizabeth Raikes

Release Date: August 6, 2019 [eBook #60064]

Language: English

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[i]

DOROTHEA BEALE
OF CHELTENHAM

[ii]

Photo. J. C. Hughes

Dorothea Beale
from the portrait by J. J. Shannon.

[iii]

DOROTHEA BEALE
OF CHELTENHAM

BY
ELIZABETH RAIKES

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
AND COMPANY LTD.
1908

[iv]

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

[v]

[vi]

TO
‘HER CHILDREN’

[vii]

PREFACE

Miss Beale left ample materials for the history of her work. Not only were all business documents, such as minutes of council meetings, nomination papers, examination questions carefully preserved, she kept also all letters which could be of any interest. She went further than merely arranging materials for a future book. In 1900 she compiled a very complete History of the Ladies’ College. Here she traced its origin, growth, and expansion; here, too, she named most carefully all who by earnest work and self-denial, by industry, talent, or generous gift, had in any way contributed to its wellbeing and influence. She was anxious that all faithful work should be known.

But Miss Beale recognised that after her death there would be a demand for something more. She was earnestly desirous that in any account which might appear of herself, the work for which she lived should have the first place. With her innate sensitiveness, she shrank from the thought of a Life. It would not indeed be possible to write a life of Dorothea Beale which was not also, fully and intimately, a Life of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. Yet Miss Beale left some materials for the more personal side of the book—many letters, diaries, and autobiographical fragments. One paper opens thus:

I have endeavoured in this book to follow Miss Beale’s own suggestions, but also to give some faint idea of what she was to the many she inspired and taught. In her History of the Ladies’ College she left little historical fact unmentioned: it is possible for another to show that she was the real founder, the main builder.

Many thanks are owing to those who kindly furnished me with letters from Miss Beale. It was difficult to select from the very large number received, and it was with much regret that many had to be excluded, lest the book should become unwieldy.

It remains but to add one word on my gratitude for the unfailing kindness and generous help of those who have read this book in manuscript and proof; to Mrs. Reynolds and Miss Bertha Synge; to Miss Helen Cunliffe who undertook the somewhat wearisome task of deciphering the diaries, and, lastly, to Miss Alice Andrews, whose name Miss Beale associated with mine when she asked me to write a History of the College.

ELIZABETH RAIKES.

June 2, 1908.

[ix]

CONTENTS

[x]

[xi]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[1]

CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD

Dorothea Beale was born on March 21, 1831. The story of her childhood and youth forms a good illustration of the best education that girls of the early Victorian time could obtain. It gives also a glimpse of the fears and hopes, the silent struggles, the disappointments of many a girl who strove to wrest, as from a grudging Fate, the opportunity to inform and use her mind. As far as possible this story is told autobiographically.

Miss Beale belonged to a Gloucestershire family. One ancestor, in the early days of the manufacturing settlement in the Stroud Valley, married a Miss Hyde, a relation of the Chancellor. She brought to her husband Hyde Court, Chalford, where Miss Beale’s brother, Mr. Henry Beale, now resides. Miss Beale’s own father, however, never lived there. His parents, who married young, settled at Brownshill in Gloucestershire, and here his father (Dorothea’s grandfather) died, leaving a widow aged only twenty-four with three children, John, Miles, and Mary, to be brought up on very slender means. Mrs. John Beale removed to Bath, where she remained till the[2] boys left school for Guy’s Hospital. Then she came to live with them in Essex, where for a time they practised in partnership. In 1824 Miles married Dorothea Margaret Complin, a lady of Huguenot extraction; her grandfather had practised as a physician in Spital Square, one of the original settlements of the French immigrants.

In 1830 the young couple with three children came to live in St. Helen’s parish, Bishopsgate, where a year later Dorothea, their fourth child and third daughter, was born. She was baptized in the ancient church of St. Helen’s on June 10, 1831. ‘Awoke early. Baptism Day. Read the service,’ she wrote in her diary in 1891.

The Complins were a family of wide connections. Mrs. Beale’s aunt, Mrs. Cornwallis, wife of the Rev. William Cornwallis, rector of Wittersham, Kent, was an active, benevolent woman with literary tastes and occupations. She took a great interest in her two young nieces, Elizabeth and Dorothea Margaret Complin, who at an early age lost their own mother, her sister. The two little girls were sent to school at Ealing, where the elder, Elizabeth, gained many prizes or ‘Rewards of Merit,’ as school prizes were then called. After her sister’s marriage to Mr. Miles Beale, Elizabeth Complin lived for some time with her clever aunt and cousin, Mrs. Cornwallis and her daughter Caroline, sharing their interests and studies. On the death of her brother’s wife she came to live in London. There she was brought into immediate touch with her nieces, Dorothea Beale and her sisters, whom she delighted to help and advise in their reading, and who by her means became familiar with the aims and ideals of the Cornwallises. These more distant relations, whose intellectual aims and work Miss Beale always reckoned among the influences[3] of her early life, were themselves authors of no mean merit. ‘Mrs. Cornwallis wrote several devotional books, and is said to have learned Hebrew in the first instance to teach her grandson, James Trimmer. She wrote also for him a series of papers on the canonical Scriptures, in four volumes. This was published by subscription, as was the custom with expensive works in those days. The Queen and a number of great people entered their names, and with the profits Mrs. Cornwallis was able to build schools in her husband’s parish.’[1]

James Trimmer died when only twelve. His other grandmother was also literary—Mrs. Sarah Trimmer, famous in her own day as the author of nearly thirty volumes for the young. Her Sacred History was the most important of these, but perhaps the best known now is The History of the Robins.

In after years Miss Caroline Cornwallis moved to Maidstone, where she exercised her many talents and versatile mind in varied occupations. Miss Cornwallis not only studied Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but such questions of the day as criminal procedure; she also read philosophy. She wrote besides articles for the Westminster Review and Fraser’s Magazine, several books in a series entitled ‘Small Books on Great Subjects—edited by a few well-wishers to knowledge.’ The first was Philosophical Theories and Experience of a Pariah. She said women were regarded as pariahs, and were it known that the book was written by a woman it would not be read.[3] Others of the series which she wrote were some volumes entitled A Brief View of Greek Philosophy, and some historical works, The State of the World before the Introduction of Christianity. She also wrote a classical novel called Pericles and Aspasia. Miss Cornwallis rejoiced in the fact that as a woman, though unknown, she obtained for her writings the praise of ‘big-wigs.’

[5]

Caroline Frances Cornwallis
From a painting by herself

Miss Cornwallis reflects the thought of her day with regard to women’s work. It was one of the tasks of her cousin, Dorothea Beale—whose ‘fagging’ in the next generation did so much for her own sex and the world—to show that the best work is done when the question of what will be said about it does not affect it one way or the other.[4]

The authorship of the Small Books was a well-kept secret.

The Beales were a very large family, with more than twenty years between the eldest and youngest children;[6] and all those things which make home life at once precious in itself and valuable as a training for the world’s work were theirs to a full extent: mutual love and toil and suffering, the elder serving the younger, the little ones looking up to the wise elder sisters, the constant practice of all those qualities which are the law of a well-ordered religious home. Both parents from the midst of their own absorbing personal occupations found time to lead out the mental abilities of their children, by reading aloud to them, giving verses of Scripture and poetry to be learned by heart, and finding time to hear them repeated. The home atmosphere was serious and intellectual. Dorothea said she owed much to the literary tastes of her parents. ‘I shall never forget,’ she said, ‘how we learned to love Shakspere, through my father’s reading to us, when we were quite young, selected portions. I still remember the terror which, as a very small child, I felt as I heard Portia pronounce the verdict. I thought Shylock had really gained the day.[6]

‘History and general literature we would read with our mother, and listen with delight to her stories of the eventful era she had lived through.’

Miles Beale, like his wife, belonged to a family with cultivated tastes and interests. Among his relations he could reckon the eminent geologist and archæologist, William Symonds,[7] rector of Pendock, Gloucestershire, whose daughter married Sir Joseph Hooker. In connection with his friend the Rev. Charles Mackenzie, vicar of St. Helen’s, and others, Mr. Beale joined a committee known as the Literary Society, of which he became honorary secretary, for the institution of lectures in[7] Crosby Hall. A library and evening classes were also formed, and these became in time the basis of the present City of London College for young men. He was much helped by Miss Maria Hackett, well known for her diligent efforts to rescue old endowments which, granted for girls’ education, had been alienated to boys. Mr. Beale, who was fond of music, was also a prime mover in getting up concerts of sacred music. ‘This made us acquainted with some musicians, and amongst others with Mrs. Bartholomew and her husband, the friend of Mendelssohn, who translated many of the German songs. He was a most interesting and cultivated man, an artist and dramatist.’[8]

The growing children were often allowed to be present when their father’s friends came, and thus silently heard much thoughtful and intellectual conversation. They looked up to him as to one who expected them to care for books and for matters of public moment, and he strove to interest them in his own pursuits and reading, and to give them a taste for what was really good. ‘“Blessed are the pure in heart”—poor Swift,’ he said one day as he handled a volume of the great satirist. ‘That,’ said Dorothea long after, ‘was the best literature lesson I ever received.’ The daughter must have resembled her father both in literary taste and zeal. This busy man, who found time to pursue so many interests, would accuse himself of being ‘naturally idle.’ It may come as a surprise to many who knew the strenuous life at Cheltenham to find this was a fault of which the Principal constantly accused herself.

One friend who was much with the Beales, often dining with them on Sundays, was Charles Mackenzie, then headmaster of St. Olave’s Grammar School, and[8] successively vicar of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and St. Benet’s, Gracechurch Street, and prebendary of St. Paul’s. Dorothea felt she owed much to his teaching; he prepared her for confirmation in 1847. As children she and her brothers and sisters attended St. Helen’s. Again to quote her autobiography:

The elder daughters were at first educated by daily governesses. Dorothea said that among her earliest reminiscences about 1840 were those relating to the choice of a governess.

Memory preserves the name—Miss Wright—of the lady who earned this word of praise. When she left, the girls were sent to school.

The arrangements were doubtless similar to those of the period in all schools of the same kind, such as were described by Miss Beale in one of her early articles on the Education of Girls.

The school was at Stratford, and it lent perhaps a personal reminiscence to a favourite line of Chaucer’s Prologue, on which, in the literature lessons at Cheltenham, Miss Beale never failed to dwell.

She always had a horror of schoolgirl French, and the practice at one time so common of permitting no talk except in French.

[11]

Young as Dorothea was when she went to school, she was no doubt distinguished there for her industry and ability, and certainly for her conscientiousness. A little story of this remains. On one occasion she fainted in church, and when some kindly hand removed her bonnet, she revived, and clung to it desperately, because she would not have her head uncovered in church. The weary rounds in the garden lingered in the memory of those who performed them, and there were those who would tell in after years how faithfully the little Dorothea would perform her ‘turns,’ while some girls were not above cheating a little.

The school-days were not prolonged, for ‘fortunately,’ she says,—

The reading of a book named Scientific Dialogues she counted also as an era in her mental history. All the good reviews of the time, the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and Blackwood’s Magazine, came in her way, with books of travel and biographies. She made elaborate tables on all sorts of subjects, some of which in neat handwriting[12] may still be seen. She had access to all Whately’s works, and worked up alone his Logic and Rhetoric.

This unwearied study was no accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, it was the outcome of a true if youthful admiration for what was noble and good. ‘I worshipped for years Isabella of Castile. Sir James Stephen’s essay on George the Third filled my imagination with magnificent visions; his Port Royalists were my ideal characters; especially was Pascal a hero, I read and re-read his Life and Provincial Letters.’[15]

Pascal’s life perhaps breathed for her a spirit of emulation. ‘I borrowed a Euclid, and without any help read the first six books, carefully working through the whole of the fifth, as I did not know what was usually done. It did not occur to me to ask my father for lessons in such subjects.’[16] She also made some way with algebra, and calculated for herself the distance to the moon. Much time, she owned, was wasted by working alone. But the very difficulties proved a source of help, showing her the value of knowledge acquired by effort and search, as opposed to mere information received from another. In all her reading she received both help and sympathy from her aunt, Elizabeth Complin, who herself understood Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, had considerable taste for mathematics, and was fond of philosophy. She was one of the first subscribers to Mudie’s. The London Library was also a mine of wealth to the young readers.

Outside her home, the chief educational influence for Dorothea at this period must have been the lectures of the Literary Institution at Crosby Hall, and more especially the Gresham Lectures. She attended some of these in company with a younger sister, who often grew[13] weary and hungry when Dorothea, after a long morning’s work, would stay to talk abstrusely with a professor, or linger over a bookstall on the way home to dinner. The professor was probably Mr. Pullen, of whose lectures on astronomy she wrote that they ‘inspired a passionate desire to know more of mathematics, and to understand all the processes described. I obtained books on mechanics and spelt them out as well as I was able, but was often baffled. The mysteries of the Calculus I pored over in vain ... not knowing that I lacked the knowledge which alone could make it intelligible.’[17]

Dorothea’s educational fortune proved itself to be better than that of the Prioress, for in 1847 she was sent with two elder sisters, their characters ‘ripe for observation,’ to Mrs. Bray’s fashionable school for English girls in the Champs Elysées. This school, kept by English ladies, was supposed to offer a good English education, as well as French.

[14]

One personal glimpse we have of the sisters at school in a letter of Mr. Beale’s to Dorothea: ‘I thought your last letter very nicely written; tell Eliza so, though it did not apply to hers. She does not write much, though in the right spirit too: but a genteel hand is of great importance. I am aware it requires much practice.’

The old-fashioned word exactly describes the neat, fine, pointed handwriting, which is preserved for us in two or three French exercise-books of the time. This writing soon after began to suffer from too much of the German character, and later still more from unduly ambitious haste. There is also in existence a thin book of dictées signed Dorothée, belonging to this period. The teacher has written at the foot of one or two of these, after the enumeration of a few omitted commas and accents, a word surely inapt as bestowed on this pupil, ‘Etourdie.’

The school was brought to an untimely end by the Revolution of 1848, when a mob surrounded the house demanding garden-tools as firearms. These were not available, but Miss Bray faced the men and persuaded them to leave quietly. Before this incident occurred Dorothea Beale and her sisters had been fetched home by a brother, who did not, however, leave Paris without taking them round the city to see as much as they could of the movements of the Revolution.

This return from school may be considered the close of childhood; for Dorothea was now seventeen. A grave and quiet girl, so we learn from one or two friends of her youth, with a sweet, earnest expression, and deliberate speech; also with a sunshiny smile and a merry laugh on occasion. She was remarkable even in a studious, sedentary family for her love of reading and study. For her the fields of literature had taken the place of those other fields and gardens now held to be a[15] necessity for the best development of children’s bodies and minds. But her life in the less favourable surroundings of a great city was made bright by ‘the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet’s dream.’ The joys of imagination and fancy, the delight of entering into the thoughts of the great, were hers, and lifted her above what was small and trivial. She knew also, and from babyhood seems to have known, a stern side of life. An innate sense of duty, that guide she never failed to observe, already hedged her steps, protecting her strong, eager spirit from flights of ‘unchartered freedom,’ leading it through restraint and self-denial towards a glorious liberty.

There was plenty to do at home; younger sisters to be taught and schoolboys’ lessons to be superintended. The boys were at Merchant Taylors’ School, where the education was neither better nor worse than in other public schools of the day. Such as it was, it gave Dorothea a horror of the old-fashioned methods by which boys were taught Latin and Euclid, without intelligence and without sympathy. It was one of her tasks at this time to aid in the daily grind of this uninteresting work. Mrs. Frederick Sewell, an old friend of the family, remembers the boys going off to their lessons under the supervision of the clever elder sister. Uncongenial as must have been to her the work of directing boys already wearied with a long day at school, it was evidently done in a spirit of dutifulness and high endeavour. In 1876, a brother, the Reverend Edward Beale of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, wrote to her after what proved to be a final parting: ‘Our lives seem wonderfully linked together, and I am more conscious every year how much my life has been influenced by your early teaching. If I had[16] followed that way of Duty I should have found the entrance less rugged to the more excellent way.’ Nor was the task a wasted one for Dorothea herself. She determined, she tells us, to follow her brothers’ lessons on her own account as well as theirs, and thus was enabled to gain a thorough knowledge of Latin grammar.

The younger sisters remember the careful and regular teaching given them by the elder ones, the quiet instructive games they were encouraged to play with little pictures from Greek mythology, and the rewards bestowed on industrious pupils. It is on record that Dorothea herself dressed a doll for a little sister’s birthday.

For she was by no means unequal to feminine pursuits. She could be what is called useful at home; the inevitable sock-darning which falls to a girl’s portion in a family of many boys was not neglected; though carried on simultaneously with the mental exercise of learning German verbs. An exquisitely fine piece of tatting remains to testify to skilfulness of fingers, as well as to the perseverance she more gladly devoted to intellectual efforts. Such was the interleaved New Testament, a monument of patient toil, into which she copied in very small writing whole passages of comment from the Fathers and other writers. So full of work was the home life that there can have been scarcely any leisure; but a few so-called holidays were spent in rubbing brasses in the ancient city churches. There was full occupation even for the strenuous spirit of Dorothea Beale, in the interests and affairs of home, but a wider field for her energies was to open with the gates of Queen’s College in 1848.

[17]

CHAPTER II
QUEEN’S COLLEGE

Mr. Llewelyn Davis rightly said that the establishment of Queen’s College was an epoch in women’s education. Like that of all really great institutions, its development and growth were an outcome of the needs of the time. But the movement which led up to it was ‘not from beneath but from above. It was compassion in the hearts of a few good men which moved them to help a forlorn class of solitary and ill-paid workers, that seemed the immediate cause. A little band of men full of faith and good works came to the help of a man whose influence was quiet but strong.’ The good man of whom Miss Beale thus spoke was David Laing, who was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Kentish Town, from 1847 to 1858. Good he was, in many senses of the word: a man of education, wide culture, and personal force. He showed both large-hearted charity and wisdom in dealing with the needs of those for whom it was his duty to care, and he was ready to make any self-sacrifice required in carrying out his schemes for them.

In 1843 he became Honorary Secretary of the[18] Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, a position he occupied till his death in 1860, and the lamentable state of women’s education, particularly that of professing teachers, was brought forcibly before him. The society, which had had a kind of passive existence only for two or three years, began at once under Mr. Laing to develop manifold activities. Within a year the work of help for which it was primarily intended was in full swing, and its scope of usefulness was enlarged by the establishment of a registry and a scheme for granting diplomas to governesses.

It was soon found to be a real difficulty to know the efficient teacher from the mere pretender. For the lack of education is frequently seen in an assumption of knowledge. In the days when women were required to teach everything, a confession of ignorance on almost any subject was regarded as a disgrace. The advance of true education is marked by the fact that it is no longer necessary for a governess to pretend to knowledge she does not possess.

It was soon seen that if the registry for teachers was to be of any value, some test must be established for the women it undertook to recommend. The first efforts at examination revealed such depths of ignorance, that the further necessity of instructing those who wished to avail themselves of the society’s diplomas was perceived. This need happily coalesced with the generous plan of Miss Murray, Maid of Honour to the Queen. She seems first to have thought of a college for women, and had already received donations of money towards such an object. These she transferred to Mr. Laing, when in 1844 he entered into communication with the Government respecting the establishment of a college. In 1847 Queen Victoria graciously gave her permission for[19] the adoption of the title ‘Queen’s College,’ and a house in Harley Street, adjacent to that occupied by the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution was taken. Mr. Laing then called upon some of the Professors of King’s College to help him in the work by giving lectures to governesses and others, and it was largely owing to their talent and unwearied kindness that the College became rapidly so successful.

It should not, however, be thought that Queen’s College was destined by its founders solely to help governesses, though in this direction its usefulness was immediately seen. Miss Murray and Mr. Laing, like Alfred Tennyson and others less immediately interested in the scheme, looked beyond such direct results to the larger needs of women. The time had come when it was recognised that marriage could not be the lot of all,—that there might be purpose and interest in a woman’s life even when she could not be married, and that to use marriage merely as an escape from an empty impoverished existence was an act unworthy of a good woman. Women were now willing to fit themselves for life independently of marriage, and for this end were seeking intellectual development. Therefore the founders of Queen’s College planned that the education should be general, and not merely an initiation into a craft which a governess might learn as if she were a member of a certain guild. For the governess herself, it was surely best that she should be educated as if she had interests in common with the rest of her sex, and for all women it was needful that they should seek means to inform, occupy, and control their own active minds and ‘wandering affections.’ Mr. Laing thought with compassionate horror of the wasted lives of many women, of their capabilities and sympathies which were meant to[20] enrich the lives of others, degraded by misuse or disuse into positively harmful activities. After Queen’s College had been opened for some months he wrote, in words which some will recognise as a favourite quotation of Miss Beale’s, ‘the fate of some victim of a conventional marriage, or of a life of celibacy ending in deranged health, is particularly sad and pitiful. Like the daughters of Pandarus who, after being nurtured by the goddesses and fed on honey and incense by the Graces, are snatched away by the Harpies, “And doomed for all their loving eyes, To serve the Furies who hate constantly.”’

Miles Beale was among those who shared such thoughts for women. It was his aim to give his daughters every opportunity to cultivate their minds and pursue any path of knowledge they should desire. Above all, he wished that they should not regard marriage as a necessity.

The inaugural lecture on the opening of Queen’s College was delivered by the Rev. F. D. Maurice, the first Head of the College, on Wednesday, March 29, 1848. As his inspiring but stern words fell upon the ears of Dorothea Beale, we may well believe that the sense of vocation which must early have grown for her out of her natural dutifulness, became to her more clearly shaped. Certainly, in reading them now, we feel we are tracing back to its source a stream of that thought with which she herself in due time awed and inspired many a young teacher. ‘The vocation of a teacher is an awful one; you cannot do her real good, she will do others unspeakable harm if she is not aware of its usefulness. Merely to supply her with necessaries, merely to assist her in procuring them for herself ... is not fitting her for her work. You may but confirm her in the notion that the training of an immortal spirit may be[21] just as lawfully undertaken in a case of emergency as that of selling ribbands. How can you give a woman self-respect, how can you win for her the respect of others, in whom such a notion or any modification of it dwells? Your business is by all means to dispossess her of it; to make her feel the greatness of her work, and yet to show her that it can be honestly performed.’

The speaker went on to deal with the word ‘Accomplishments,’ a word which at that time was supposed to cover the whole of a woman’s education; and he pleaded that something more than finish, something substantial and elementary was needed for those whose duty was ‘to watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the first dawnings of intelligence;—how thoughts spring into acts, how acts pass into habits. Surely they ought, above all others, to feel that the truths which lie nearest to us are the most wonderful ... that study is not worth much if it is not busy about the roots of things.’

Again, with what responsive if silent joy must the girl who had toiled alone at Euclid and Algebra have heard his encouraging words on Mathematics, then held to be an unfeminine pursuit. ‘To regard numbers with the kind of wonder with which a child regards them, to feel that when we are learning the laws of number we are looking into the very laws of the universe,—this makes the study of exceeding worth to the mind and character; yet it does not create the least impatience of ordinary occupations; ... on the contrary ... it helps us to know that nothing is mean but what is false.’

The concluding thoughts of Mr. Maurice’s address must be familiar to Cheltenham pupils: ‘The teacher in every department, if he does his duty, will admonish his pupils that they are not to make fashion, or public opinion, their rule ... that if these are their ends, they[22] will not be sincere in their work or do it well.... Colleges for men and women ... exist to testify that opinion is not the God they ought to worship.’ We can hardly realise, after nearly sixty years of the liberal education won for us largely through this first concerted effort of earnest men and women, the trembling joy and diffidence of those pupils,—some of them mere girls, some already themselves engaged in the work of teaching,—who formed the first classes in Harley Street. We have become so accustomed to the new order of things then inaugurated, that their allusions to Tennyson’s Princess, their fear of being regarded as outré seem to us almost self-conscious and unnecessary. Professor Maurice opened his address with an apology for the word ‘College’; on another occasion he spoke of the project as ‘equally extravagant if not equally imaginative with that lately set forth by our great poet.’ Miss Wedgwood recalls dismay under the ‘witless laughter roused by the mention of the College after I had been its pupil for more than a year.’

Nor was this all. A more annoying opposition took shape in articles in the Quarterly in which the theological opinions of the lecturers were attacked. The writer found fault in the first place on such points as these: the early age of admission was likely to lead to desultory education; the absence of proper framework and machinery, and the want of proper authority were to be deplored; the low rate of payment might lead governesses availing themselves of the classes to get by their means a smattering of knowledge. He then proceeded to attack the professors for a ‘sort of modified Pantheism and Latitudinarianism prevailing in their so-called theology,’ adding that the lecturer on English Composition distinguished himself above the rest of his company by the ‘Germanisms embroidered[23] on his prose.’ Mr. Laing took up a vigorous pen to answer the Quarterly, and in defence of Maurice, Kingsley, and the rest, exclaimed: ‘These men are doing a righteous and godly work in the face of heaven and earth.’

It is a wonderful history. Remarkable, too, were the women and girls who seized the advantages offered them, who were waiting almost literally for the College doors to be opened. Mrs. Davenport, then Miss Sarah Woodman, records with natural pride the fact that she was the first pupil. She was quickly followed by Miss King, and we may be sure that the three Miss Beales were not far behind them.

Among the earliest pupils beside those already named, were Miss Buss, Miss Frances Martin, Miss Jex-Blake, Miss Elizabeth Gilbert, and Miss Adelaide Anne Procter, whose simple holland dress without ornament, bands of dark hair, pale complexion, and regular features are noted for us by a young fellow-student, Miss Wardell. And the teachers were worthy of the pupils. Among the lecturers and examiners were the Rev. F. D. Maurice, the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, afterwards Dean of Wells, the translator of Dante, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, the Rev. R. C. Trench, then Dean of Westminster, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, John Hullah, W. Sterndale Bennett, Dr. Brewer the historian, Professors Bernays and Brasseur. These are well-known names, but there were many others almost forgotten to-day, who were interesting and inspiring teachers. There were no lady-teachers at first, but Miss Beale enumerates with grateful words a staff of lady-visitors, ‘who undertook, of course gratuitously, the often burdensome duty of chaperoning. Lady Stanley of Alderley, stately and beautiful all her life, but especially then;[24] Mrs. Wedgwood, the daughter of Sir James Mackintosh, so clever and kind, whom everybody liked; Miss Elizabeth Twining, Lady Monteagle, and Lady Page Wood were often present; and a Mrs. Hayes, of whom I have lost sight, was one of the most diligent. I never happened to meet Lady Canning, she went to India almost immediately.’

Before tracing Miss Beale’s own connection with Queen’s, it is worth while to read the following letters written to her by Miss Buss in 1889, in which the working of the College, especially with regard to the evening classes, is shown in a detailed and personal way:

In reply to some questions from Miss Beale in answer to the above, Miss Buss wrote again on January 17, 1889:—

Dorothea Beale was, as a matter of fact, strictly a pupil of Queen’s College for an even shorter time than her great contemporary. But there for the first time she obtained the object of her ambition—mathematical training, given by Mr. Astley Cock. Of this she characteristically remarked, ‘as the class was small I could go at[26] my own pace. The work was however elementary, and as I had read a good deal alone, I found private lessons necessary.... I read with him privately Trigonometry, Conics, and the Differential Calculus.’ After a time Miss Beale was asked to help in teaching mathematics, and in 1849 was appointed the first lady mathematical tutor. ‘I had the entrée of any class I liked, being tutor, and attended at various times—Latin, Greek, German, and Mental Science.’ She speaks also of the delight she had ‘at the opening of a Greek class by Professor Plumptre. The class, it is true, languished and died in less than two years. For nearly a year it consisted of myself and a friend, and most thoroughly did we enjoy reading Plato and Sophocles under such a teacher.’ Miss Beale also much enjoyed an interesting German literature class held by Dr. Bernays.[19] The formal reports of progress made, of attendance, and even of good conduct at the classes may still be seen. The attendance, it goes without saying, was always regular, the conduct very good, and the progress most satisfactory.

In 1854 Mr. Plumptre required help with the Latin tuition, and asked Miss Beale to take a junior class. In the same year she was offered the post of head teacher in the school under Miss Parry, from whom she says she received ‘much kindness, and learned from her many valuable lessons; we travelled abroad together during one long vacation.’

Queen’s College, both by the tuition it afforded, and the experience it gave in teaching and managing classes, was an important factor in Dorothea Beale’s training for her life’s work. There was a yet further advantage in its certificates. Miss Beale and her sisters, like Miss[27] Buss and others engaged in the work of education, desired and obtained from the College diplomas certifying their ability to teach. These were obtained by examinations, which in the earliest days were conducted in the manner described in Miss Buss’s letter already quoted. Miss Dorothea Beale herself spoke with unmitigated pleasure of her first examination conducted by Professor Maurice. ‘The vivâ voce was a delightful conversation; he led us on by his sympathetic manner and kindly appreciation, so that we hardly remembered he was an examiner’; and she says later, ‘I remember to this day what a pleasant hour we had of vivâ voce; his wonderful power of intellectual sympathy came out, and made us forget that we were being examined; he seemed to take pleasure in following up our thoughts on the bearings of the history we had read, so that it appeared we were holding a delightful conversation on the subject. Again, in speaking of language, he wanted not merely formal and conventional grammar, and showed such pleasure when a grammatical definition was enlarged beyond the scope of ordinary school-books.’

It should be remembered that the examination which proved to be so ‘delightful’ was on the result of her own private reading encouraged by home sympathy, and a few public lectures. The questions asked were of wide scope; some were quite simple, almost superficial; others were framed so as to draw upon intelligence or a reserve of knowledge.

The educational certificates of sixty years ago, the first ever given, have a great and touching interest for those who love to follow the development of intellectual advance. The simple way in which the advantages offered by the examinations held by the Committee of Queen’s College are set forth speaks of effort and hope,[28] unconnected with the school routine and studied preparation made necessary by the large and complicated system of the present day. Below the lists of Patrons, Committee, and Lady Visitors, it is stated that the Committee is prepared to give certificates in any of the following subjects: The knowledge of Scripture; English Grammar and Literature; History, Ancient or Modern; French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc.; Music, Vocal or Instrumental; Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry; Geography, Geology, Natural Philosophy, Botany, etc.; Drawing, Painting in any style; Principles and Methods of Teaching. To this truly magnificent offer,—infinite indeed if any value is to be attributed to ‘etc.’—is attached the note: ‘As it would be absurd to suppose that any governess could combine all these varied subjects, the List is offered, that Parents may select those to which they attach most importance; and may observe how the certificates meet their wishes.’

Miss Dorothea Beale obtained six of these certificates, and four of the later ones, granted under slightly different conditions. The first, dated June 12, 1848, for English Literature and English Grammar, states that the examiner, Professor Maurice, is of opinion that Miss Dorothea Beale ‘has shown much intelligence, and a very satisfactory acquaintance with these subjects.’ The diploma bears also, as do the other certificates, the signature of Mr. Laing, the Honorary Secretary, and of the Rev. C. F. Nicolay, Deputy Chairman, and afterwards called Dean of Queen’s College. Mr. Nicolay was also Librarian of King’s College. The next certificate, for French, is only three days later in date, June 15, 1848. On this, Professor Isidore Brasseur states that he considers Miss Dorothea Beale[29] ‘well qualified to teach that language (which she speaks fluently, having acquired it in France) theoretically and by practice.’ The two diplomas gained in December of the same year are of even greater interest for her pupils at Cheltenham. The first of these, dated December 11, 1848, and signed by the Rev. Thomas Jackson, Principal of the Battersea Training College, who had examined her in the Principles and Method of Teaching, states that ‘she has paid praiseworthy attention to the subject, and is likely to become an accomplished teacher.’ We note the office of the examiner. Already then, in 1848, itself a mere infant, elementary education was giving the lead in this important subject; for when at last, after a long day of desultory and often unfruitful toil, those who were the professed teachers of the rich sought to learn the meaning and methods of their work, they found that they could only do so in England from the teachers of the poor.

The date of the next certificate, December 26, shows how much these diplomas were dependent on voluntary and individual attention, and opportunity on the part of the examiners. This, signed by Professor Plumptre, states that in her knowledge of Holy Scripture, Miss Dorothea Beale exhibits ‘a very intimate knowledge of its history and Scripture.’ On January 16, of the following year, a certificate for Geography was signed by Mr. Nicolay, who is of opinion that ‘she has studied the subject carefully in its details, and that her knowledge in its various branches is satisfactory.’

In November 1850 Miss Beale received from her mathematical tutor, the Rev. T. Cock, a certificate of efficiency in Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, and Trigonometry. He is of opinion that ‘she has acquired a sound knowledge of the first principles of these four subjects,[30] showing considerable ingenuity in the application of them to examples and problems; that she possesses the power of defining and distinguishing with clearness and brevity, and that appreciation of mathematical reasoning which, if further cultivated, will enable her to study with success those treatises on Natural Philosophy which require a knowledge of the exact sciences.’

In 1855, after the certificates had become classified, this diploma was exchanged for a first-class certificate. And in the course of these later years she received two other first-class certificates, one for Latin, and one for German; and, for pianoforte playing, a second-class certificate, signed by W. Sterndale Bennett. For this was required the performance of the more important sonatas of Mozart (without accompaniments), the early sonatas of Beethoven, the ‘Lieder ohne Worte’ of Mendelssohn, and Cramer’s Studies. This must have been for Dorothea Beale a period of happy and fruitful life and work, during which her interests enlarged in many directions. The connection with Queen’s College brought much congenial acquaintance, while at home she was working vigorously at German and still following the classical work of her brothers.

In 1851 Miss Beale’s family removed to 31 Finsbury Square, then a great medical centre; thirty-one houses were occupied by medical men. There were friends to share her aims and interests. Among these we specially note Mrs. Blenkarne and Miss Elizabeth Alston. To the first of these Dorothea confided her hopes and aims, and gained from her sympathy and help, a boon she never forgot. The links of the friendship so begun ran on throughout her life. Mrs. Blenkarne’s daughters and great nieces were educated at Cheltenham.

In Elizabeth Alston Dorothea had a friend of her[31] own age—a friend who survives to tell of the many happy hours the young girls spent together, of the books they read and discussed, their philanthropic works, and dreams of good. Dorothea, always fond of teaching, gladly instructed her friends. Miss Alston learned from her to read St. Mark in Greek, and in return taught her to sing. ‘We would linger long at the piano, as I sought to make her convey by her singing the depth of meaning in the words, “But the Lord is mindful of his own.” She told me it was a revelation to her.’

As late as 1902 Miss Beale wrote to that friend of her youth: ‘I think with gratitude of those lessons you gave me in singing; this, I believe, has helped much to make me able to teach without fatigue. “In questa tomba oscura” was fine for a chest voice. I suppose you are as much interested in music as ever.’ And in 1903, with an allusion to those designs on all knowledge which the friends had shared, she wrote: ‘Sanscrit is very fascinating; my Sanscrit studies were cut short by my coming here.’

The vacations of this period were spent sometimes at watering-places like Brighton, or Blackheath, where she would be in charge of the younger members of the family. To this day is remembered her conscientious way of taking them for a walk with her watch in her hand. Sometimes she went to Germany or Switzerland, where she took every opportunity of studying schools and methods of education. She was most happy in her work. The actual teaching, apart from the subject, was in itself a delight. That power of inspiration which she held should be one of the gifts a teacher should earnestly covet, was already hers. This was felt not only by the elder pupils, whose minds under her guidance opened to[32] the interests of Latin and mathematics. The children in the school knew it also. An unexpected tribute from one of these once reached Miss Beale, when the parent of a pupil wrote: ‘I have just learned from my little girl that the Lady Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was my dear and valued teacher of olden days, at Queen’s College.... I assure you I have never ceased to cherish a warm affection for you, and I have never forgotten your great kindness to me in Harley Street.’ In 1905, at the time of the College jubilee, one who had been a child pupil of Miss Beale’s wrote to her: ‘The few months during which I was under your tuition more than fifty years ago were an epoch to me. Young as I was, I ever afterwards judged teaching by the standard set by yours, and very seldom indeed, I may truly say, has it been subsequently reached. The fifty years that have since passed, full as they have been, have never effaced the impression then received, both of your teaching and of something more comprehensive than teaching, which contact with you engendered, and which impels me to take this opportunity—late in the day as it is—to express and to thank you for.... I had a most keen desire to visit Cheltenham and the buildings and institutions which embody in so grand a manner the impress which my childish mind received.’

There is also ample evidence that the professors and lady-visitors of the College highly esteemed Miss Beale’s work there. ‘The flattering regard in which you are held at Queen’s,’ wrote her father to her just after she had left the College, are words fully justified by other letters which exist.

It is clear that this spring of work was full of hope and delight, as well as of scrupulous effort. Dorothea[33] Beale possessed at this time a growing confidence in her own powers, educational ideals which were slowly shaping themselves, and a consciousness of her fitness for the work on which she was engaged.

Then, at the end of 1856, the connection with Queen’s College came rather abruptly to an end by Miss Beale’s own wish. She appears to have been some time feeling that there was a tendency for the whole administration of the College to get too much into the hands of one person; and that there was consequently not enough scope for that womanly influence which she felt to be so important where the education of young girls is concerned. She returned to her work after the summer holiday of 1856—a holiday spent in visiting Swiss and German schools—to find the power of the lady-visitors more restricted than ever. In fact, she said, ‘the time had come when it could be truly said, “the lady-visitors have no power.”’ As she was not in a position to effect the changes she desired, she sent in her resignation, and her friend and fellow-teacher, Miss Rowley, did the same. The actual moment for doing this in November seems to have been decided for Miss Beale by hearing she could obtain the post of head-teacher at Casterton.

Miss Beale’s connection with Queen’s College had been long and close, and her gratitude to it was so great that she hoped to be allowed to resign without explanation. This was during the headship of Dr. Plumptre. When Miss Beale’s resignation reached him, he urged her to make the reasons for it known, and his letter on the subject shows something of the consideration in which she was held.

Miss Beale finally gave the desired explanation with full detail and this preface:—

The defects she deplored—pioneer mistakes she called them later—were then enumerated in detail, and she dwelt especially on the hindrance to education caused by so much authority being left to one individual, who could not possibly be in a position to know the abilities and standard of work of every pupil. Much harm, she pleaded, had been done

[35]

On learning Miss Beale’s reasons for leaving, and that her decision was irrevocable, Mr. Plumptre wrote: ‘I wish to state at once that I believe most thoroughly that what you have done has been done conscientiously because it seemed to you—painful as it was—to be in the line of duty.’ But before this letter reached her, Dorothea had accepted another post, that of head-teacher in the Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton.

[36]

CHAPTER III
CASTERTON

‘It was a year full of great suffering mingled with a peace which the world cannot give.... I look on this as one of the most profitable years of my life, but I could not long have borne the strain of work and anxiety.’

Thus, long after, when in the distance of years the events of earlier life could be seen in their relation to each other and to the future, Miss Beale wrote of the year at Casterton. But she did not often speak of it. To the end it gave her pain to go in thought over that time of loneliness and strain. Even late in life, if she entered into conversation about it, she would turn from the subject saying it distressed her too much; ‘some other time she would try’ to speak of it. But, none the less, she knew she had gained much at Casterton. She, who was ever ready to learn from mistakes, from pain, from adverse circumstances, gratefully acknowledged her debt to all that had shown her the real difficulties of her vocation, and her own weakness, and which had deepened her consciousness of the only source of strength. Some lives are led so much at haphazard, that it really hardly appears to matter whether at any given period they have taken one direction or another. In the lives of those who, like Dorothea Beale, are always conscious of an over-ruling[37] and ordering Power, every year is not only known, but seen to have its place. The very errors, nay failures, are sunk deep into the foundations to become supports to the House of Life which, under the direction of the Master Builder, is rendered more stately with each added touch of Time. Hence, this year—not a successful one, as success is generally reckoned—has its special interest.

It was a year in which she learned much, not only about herself individually, but of feminine human nature in general. Those matters which she longed—and longed ineffectually at the time—to re-arrange in the system and time-tables she found existing at Casterton, prepared her for the organisation of the great school to which she was shortly afterwards to be called. Daily contact with many, who were more or less out of sympathy with her, must have been useful for one whose work was largely to be in the direction of influence on women and girls of varying natures and opinions. Doubtless the very loneliness of the position was bracing to her sensitive nature. ‘Above all,’ she had written to Mr. Plumptre when she accepted it, ‘it involves leaving home.’ She had seen from the first how hard a trial this would be to her, but strength and insight were won out of the suffering it cost.

The manuscript account from which the opening words of this chapter are taken, and which has been quoted before, was written many years ago. As late as 1905 Miss Beale wrote to Canon Burton, the present vicar of Casterton and chaplain to the school, that she felt she owed much to it, and ‘in grateful remembrance of her connection with it’ founded a scholarship from the school to Cheltenham. The first Casterton-Beale scholar is now at the Ladies’ College.

There were many reasons why Dorothea Beale could[38] neither be happy nor rightly appreciated at Casterton in 1857. She went at a difficult moment when the school had not recovered from the relaxed discipline consequent on the troubles of the year before. There had been a serious outbreak of scarlet fever, the Lady Superintendent herself being one of the victims. The head-teacher had left in September, and it was not convenient to supply her place before the end of the half-year. The ‘School for Clergymen’s Daughters’ is one, like many others, of which it is the reverse of disparagement to say that its present is far above its past. And it is permissible to think that if Miss Beale had found herself in any other large boarding-school of the period, she would have encountered many of the same difficulties and disappointments as those which beset her life at Casterton. Of this school she wrote much later, describing it as she felt it to be when she was there, that it was ‘in an unhealthy state. There was a spirit of open irreligion and a spirit of defiance very sad to witness; but the constant restraints, the monotonous life, the want of healthy amusements were in a great measure answerable for this.’[20] A strange tale this to us, who know of the walks and rambles, the games and matches enjoyed by the girls of Casterton to-day.

But the causes of her dissatisfaction were by no means due entirely to the school, for the engagement seems to have been entered upon on Miss Beale’s part without a real understanding of all that it involved. Her father hints this when he writes, ‘perhaps we were to blame in not learning more.’ She was engaged, not by the Lady Superintendent, but by a member of the Committee, who probably did not explain matters so fully as a woman might have done. The work was taken up in a moment[39] of impulse, as if she were glad of the opportunity it suggested of sending in her resignation to Queen’s College, instead of waiting till Christmas, as she had at first intended. Those who knew her best did not expect her to be happy in it. Mr. Plumptre wrote: ‘I am glad to hear you have found so important a work before you as that at Casterton. It may have altered within the last few years, as otherwise I should not have thought its tone, religious as well as social, likely to be congenial to you.’

She had never lived away from home for any length of time. The short periods of school life had been shared with sisters. The north was an unknown land with which the Beale family had no connection. She knew nothing of country life. She would be entirely among strangers, and that alone, for a shy and sensitive nature, is often a great trial, while boarding-school life, such as existed at Casterton, was practically unknown to her. The salary was smaller than what she had received at Queen’s College. But in leaving Queen’s College she lost far more than salary. There she had been a beloved teacher, a valued tutor whose resignation was deplored; at Casterton she was simply a new governess. Her judgment was surely at fault in thus hastily and almost impulsively accepting such a post. Though she may have greeted the offer as guidance in her difficulty about leaving Queen’s, she must have known that at Casterton it would be impossible for her to work in accord with religious opinions which were alien to her; also that in going so far she was cutting off much that was congenial and delightful from her life—such as home, friends, libraries, lectures.

Though Mr. Beale obviously doubted if his daughter could be happy in the atmosphere of Casterton, he did[40] not fail to perceive the ideal side of the work there. Appreciating the aims and generosity of the founders of the school, he held that from the great advantages it offered, it ought to become a national institution. She too went to her post there in something of a missionary spirit. Her success with her classes, and with pupils of different ages, justified her in feeling that she would be able to introduce fresh and better methods, while the very fact that a teacher of her individual experience had been chosen pointed to the belief that the authorities were anxious to bring the school into line with the advance of women’s education.

Casterton is a small village, near Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland, where that county touches Lancashire and Yorkshire. Even to-day railway communication is defective, and the country thinly populated, so that the school in its isolated position is constrained to be as self-sufficing as possible. The beauty of its surroundings may surely be reckoned among its advantages, for it is placed amid lovely country within sight of Ingleborough. Members of the school speak with delight of rambles over the surrounding fells. Perhaps Miss Beale’s habit of thinking over her lessons out of doors began here, for she afterwards told Miss Alston of the long lonely walks she used to take at Casterton.

This well-known school was founded in 1823 by Mr. Carus Wilson in order to help the clergy of the Church of England, principally those of the northern dioceses. Many of the clergy of the north were known to be absolutely unable to provide any education for their children, who at home led the simplest life with bare necessaries only. Several of these were received, boarded, educated, and partially clothed free, and the terms for all were ludicrously small. These facts should be remembered when comment[41] is made upon the régime at Casterton, or at Cowan Bridge, where the school was originally placed, a position far less favourable and healthy than its present one.

It should also be remembered that Dorothea Beale had never herself known what it was to be poor; she could hardly realise, for instance, the comfort that might exist in the uniform school dress for children whose parents were actually too poor to provide them with proper clothing.

As an institution the school was destined not only to assist the poor clergy, but, springing as it did from devoted religious effort, to save souls and promote the highest kind of education. It was from the first definitely associated with those ‘Calvinistic opinions’ on account of which the Bishop of Chester had rejected its founder for ordination in 1814.[21] The dark horror of Calvinism, permitted doubtless as a scourge after much open irreligion and careless living, was in mercy overruled in countless instances for the conviction of sin, and generally to prepare the way for a wider and more comprehending acceptance of the grace which is in Christ Jesus. But its direct results on the education of the young were disastrous indeed. Hearts, by its agency, were turned to stone, or depressed into hopeless terror; worst of all, religious forms, phraseology, even emotions were assumed by those who were prone to self-deception, or over anxious to please.

About 1845 Mr. Carus Wilson’s health broke down as a consequence of his unsparing and strenuous labours, and the management of his schools passed into the hands of others. In 1857 the Clergy Daughters’ School was governed by a Committee of six clergymen, all personal[42] friends of the founder, men of good standing in the neighbourhood. Archdeacon Evans was Chairman. This Committee sought to obtain the best teachers possible for what was then—even more than now—an out-of-the-way place, as far as the centres of education were concerned. They also aimed at fitting the girls in the school to earn their own living.

High testimonials were given to Miss Beale by the professors and lady-visitors of Queen’s College, on her appointment as head-teacher at Casterton. One from Prebendary Mackenzie is of special interest, as it shows that in accepting the work she had not in any way identified herself with the particular religious views then prevailing in the institution.

Mr. Plumptre wrote to the Lady Superintendent:—

And Mr. Denton:—

[43]

Dorothea Beale went to Casterton on the Epiphany, January 6, 1857. Her diary of 1891 records the memory of this and of the Holy Eucharist at St. Bartholomew’s at six o’clock, before her long day’s journey, a journey which ended almost in terror, so alarming to this daughter of the City were the ‘high, wild hills and rough, uneven ways’ which had to be crossed between the railway station and the school.

At first, as was natural, she seems to have thought she would like her work. Mrs. Wedgwood, writing to her in February, says: ‘I felt so much our loss in you that I could hardly join in the wishes of the lady-visitors of Queen’s that you might find your new work pleasant. However, I am truly glad now that you find your new home more agreeable than you had been led to expect, and that you think the children are happy, and times are unlike Jane Eyre.’

Very soon the strain of teaching the large number of subjects required to be taught began to be felt. A less conscientious worker might have entered lightly upon these at a period when only the most superficial textbook knowledge was required; but to Dorothea Beale, to whom each lesson meant much preparation and thought, they soon became a burden. She said afterwards that the work left her no time for exercise or recreation, and not enough for sleep. She found herself expected to teach Scripture, arithmetic, mathematics, ancient, modern, and Church history, physical and political geography, English literature, grammar and composition, French, German, Latin, and Italian. Of the last she had written when she accepted the post: ‘I do not know much of Italian, I will, however, take lessons till Christmas.’

It was obviously impossible for one person to teach all[44] these subjects properly, and it is not surprising that Miss Beale soon wrote home that she found the work hard; she does not seem to have complained of anything else. She said, among other things, that she took eight Bible-classes every week, two of which consisted of about fifty girls at a time. Her father replied with the evident intention of bracing and cheering:—

This letter was written in March 1857. Shortly after came another for her birthday on the 21st, showing how much her absence from home was felt, and that the parents were doubtful if she were in the right place.

In May another letter is evidently called forth by some[45] expression of a longing to be at home, and perhaps by hints of difficulties from Dorothea.

The last words show how well her father knew the sensitive nature hurt even by trifles, and prone to take small matters too seriously.

So the long half wore on, and we know, from some of the few who remain to tell, that Miss Beale was making her mark at Casterton. There were many there who could appreciate her careful work and inspiring lessons. Some found especially valuable her accurate teaching of Latin and mathematics, and the enormous pains she took to make her lessons intelligible to the dullest; never content to let them merely accept a given fact or explanation, but leading them on step by step to see and comprehend. Her literature classes, again, led some into a new world of ideas and thoughts, and they responded to the thrill of some noble and beautiful line which would cause their teacher’s eyes to fill with tears as she read. One, who was Miss Beale’s pupil in the first class at Casterton at this time, speaks of it with extreme gratitude:—

A little notebook remains to show how she prepared her lessons; how little she was content with repetition acquired by rote. There are also one or two little books of Scripture notes belonging to this time, interesting as the first of an immense series, marking the beginning of the work which was to be her great means of influence. One of these is on the Book of Proverbs, a book she never read again with a class; it was probably not her own choice at this time. The lessons she drew from it were of the most practical nature for daily life, and contain much teaching on true and false unworldliness. She had even then the satisfaction of knowing that her Bible teaching was acceptable to many. She wrote home: ‘Several of the first class make a practice of taking notes and afterwards copy them out into a book. This I never tell them to do, nor do I so far encourage it as to look at the notes after they are written. In the lower part of the school I do not allow them to take notes without special permission.’

Some notes on the Church services show traces of the pain she felt over instances of irreverence which she had seen in the school. Those who remember the almost awful silence in which Miss Beale’s Scripture lessons at Cheltenham were given, how she wished it to signify the humility and reverence of spirit necessary for those who would study God’s Word, can understand how she[47] must have suffered when she saw flippant and careless behaviour at prayers and Bible classes.

Amongst the numbers of children, many who had been comparatively untaught before they were brought into this continual round of religious exercise, it is not surprising to find that there were some who disliked the appeal made to heart and conscience, and who found this strict sense of reverence irksome. There was even one naughty girl who in these first days refused to attend Miss Beale’s classes.

It is clear that Miss Beale conveyed to her classes and to her fellow-workers, that she had come to Casterton in a missionary spirit. Though there were many who could appreciate her sacrifice in doing this, it placed her at a disadvantage with others. She knew herself to be in the forefront of women’s education, she knew that this school, for all the excellent intention of the authorities, could not be abreast of the movement; but she failed to realise, until she personally experienced it, that a self-appointed guide is not always welcomed.

In the summer holidays, which Miss Beale spent at home, it was noticed that she was much depressed. The second half-year’s work began in August. Doubtless she had talked over her difficulties, and her parents knew that she might soon give up her work. Soon after her return she seems to have written very strongly about things she would have liked to alter. Especially was she troubled by the low tone prevailing, the want of respect for authority, the mischief making and unhealthy friendships. She found this important school through which pious intention and effort strove to help the very poorest by protecting them from all dangerous influences, by instilling definite religious opinions of a certain type, by giving such an education as should be an effective[48] means of livelihood, very far from being the ideal college of her dreams. She began to specify her dissatisfaction and to form ideas for radical improvement. She thought its isolation against it, and that it was a drawback to have only one class of girls; she felt there should have been more communication with home,—some of the children did not even go home for the holidays;—that the life was too monotonous and uniform. Above all she deprecated a repressive system which had punishments but no prizes; a system in which all the virtues were negative, the highest obtainable being obedience to the ever-repeated ‘Thou shalt not.’

It was not possible for Dorothea Beale to see anything wrong, and to act as if in any way consenting to it, by going on quietly with her own share like one not called upon to take a leading part. She felt that steps might be taken to improve some of the matters which distressed her, and after efforts which seemed to her ineffectual, she sought an interview with the Committee. Her father was kept fully informed of what she was thinking and striving to do, as may be seen by the following extracts from his letters to her:—

And again on the same subject:—

It was unusual though not unknown for a teacher at Casterton to appeal to the Committee, and the six gentlemen who composed it, were not very eager to hear Miss Beale. They may have suspected personal motives, and some of them, no doubt, mistrusted her religious principles. Miss Beale has left notes of her interview, so interesting to us, as the first occasion on which she tried to gain her own ends—always the best—from a body of persons who were in the position of directors of education. It suggests a contrast with the Cheltenham Council meetings of her last years, when her lightest wish had weight.

The way had been prepared for her by letters which had passed between the chairman (Archdeacon Evans) and her father. In her first interview, which was of a preliminary nature, she began by saying: ‘I wished before saying anything, to know whether it was their wish to hear what I had to say, or whether they would rather I did not speak. There was a hesitation. Then Mr. Morewood, in rather a doubtful way said they were always willing. I said I understood from the Committee last time, and the Chairman’s letters to my father, that they wished it; then the others joined in with “Oh yes, certainly.”’ After making her statements on the need for reform, Miss Beale concluded by saying she should be happy to resign if the Committee were dissatisfied. The reply was: ‘Oh no, certainly not.’

At a second interview, the Committee allowed her to put before them her own suggestions for alterations. On this occasion Miss Beale began with a testimony to what the Lady Superintendent had effected in the school;[51] then mentioned the prevailing faults which so much distressed her, especially irreverence and unsuitable language; then boldly went on to point out the details of the system which might easily be improved, notably, that some prizes might be given, and that letters to and from parents should not be supervised. She said:—

‘I think an institution in which the government is entirely by punishments not likely to produce the best moral effects. I think that reports should be sent home more frequently than twice a year.’ On being asked to give instances of disregard of religion, she mentioned one or two in general terms, saying she should not think it right to give individual examples. Mr. Rose replied by saying, ‘Unfortunately, such things will occur in large schools; perhaps you came expecting to find clergymen’s daughters better than others.’ Some discussion took place on the subject of prizes, during which ‘occurred the very sapient remark that we do hear of angels being punished, but not of their going up higher, etc.... I afterwards explained what I meant by rewards, viz., distinctions, privileges, and the opportunity of doing good ... and I concluded by saying that unless I felt that the institution were doing moral good I should not care to stay.’

The interview had been less disagreeable than she had anticipated; she thought her complaint had had a fair hearing, and in spite of the strain of work and the anxiety connected with it, she felt her efforts were not wasted.

But discomfort almost inevitably succeeds complaint. There were fresh interviews with the Committee; some of the matters which most tried her in the school régime were naturally more acutely felt, as she herself grew strained with both anxiety and work. The tone of her letters home grew more sad as she began to see that after all she must give up her post. She could not bear to relinquish work that she felt had been given her to do; but she wrote:—

Miss Beale’s difficulties were no doubt aggravated by religious questions. Her chief friend on the Committee, one who appreciated her sense of duty and intellectual power, did not wish her to remain at the school. He[53] disliked her theological opinions. She seems hardly to have realised this at the time, though her father may have done so, as can be seen from the following letter:—

The matter of the resignation seems to have been hanging on all through the month of November. Miss Beale evidently wrote home again for advice, for on the 26th she received another letter from her father:—

Before Miss Beale could formally send in her threatened resignation to the Committee, she received the following letter from the Chairman:—

It will readily be imagined that this summary step on the part of the Committee caused great distress to one of Miss Beale’s sensitive nature. Nor was it easy for her to see why the difficult part she had taken upon herself for the good of the school should be misunderstood. At that moment it must have seemed like a sentence of failure,—

Among the crowning successes of later life she recognised that the blow had had its place in fashioning her life’s work. Her letter home on the subject is not[56] preserved, but the following is evidently an answer to it:—

Thus was Dorothea cheered and supported from home. Encouragement came from others also. On December 7, Mr. Plumptre wrote:—

Mr. Shepheard, curate-in-charge of Casterton, and chaplain to the school, wrote thus to Miss Beale on her leaving:—

The letter shows, what was indeed true, that difficulties and differences both in the Committee and the school were aggravated by bitterness on the subject of religious[58] opinions. This comes out still more clearly in a correspondence Miss Beale kept up for a little time with Mrs. Shepheard, who was a daughter of Mr. Carus Wilson, the aged founder of the school, and at this time infirm and worn by the immense labours of his younger days.

The Bishop and Dean of Carlisle, being called upon to advise the Committee, patiently heard evidence for eight hours. Mr. Carus Wilson also decided to visit the school himself; but before he went north, Mrs. Shepheard arranged an interview between him and Miss Beale, writing to her: ‘Do not be afraid of my beloved father—tall, grey-headed, and anxious, but clear and open as you please.’ A memorable meeting surely this, of two who with widely differing methods were alike in high, earnest aim and self-devotion. It took place in February, and in the same month Mr. Wilson made one of his last visits to his old home and flock. Mrs. Shepheard notes that ‘it is supposed that nine hundred were in this little church last Sunday to hear my father!’

In the course of the year 1858 many changes were made in the management of the Clergy Daughters’ School, and this chapter on Casterton may fitly close with an extract from a letter written to Miss Beale by her friend, Mrs. Greene, of Whittington Hall:—

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CHAPTER IV
AN INTERVAL

The early part of the year 1858 is the one period in the life of Dorothea Beale when she could have been called really free. It was a time when it became her part to choose what she would do; to wait for what was suitable, to decide between conflicting claims. She came home depressed, defeated, disappointed; but she had discovered her own weakness and real strength; she had increased her knowledge of human nature through some experience of a boarding-school and its Committee. She had learned for one thing, that it would be best for herself and for the world that she should be head of a school, and she submitted to wait for one. But in the meantime other calls and needs besides that of education were heard and considered.

The fact of apparent failure in her recent position at Casterton might have been taken as an indication that her energies should perhaps be directed to a fresh field of action. She was not under the necessity of earning her bread; she loved her home and had a circle of friends and interests about her. Various kinds of good work for others appealed to her, and her ability and gifts made it clear that she might have succeeded[61] in other walks of life than the one in which her steps were finally directed.

Though Dorothea had inherited, in a strong degree, her father’s antipathy to a mariage de convenance, though she was far from regarding marriage as the necessary completion of a woman’s life, she had not—at this time at least—made any definite refusal of it. This is a subject to which it will not be necessary to return in Miss Beale’s life, devoted as it became to one great cause. But here, before her vocation had distinctly declared itself, it is right to say that in the course of events she was not only not without opportunities of marriage, she also gave it her full consideration. Flippant scholars might echo the words of Punch, ‘How different from us, Miss Beale and Miss Buss!’ But in the sense in which the words were intended, this was not true in either case. Suffice it to say, that Dorothea Beale knew what it was to be admired, loved, even for a short time engaged to be married. She knew also, among other experiences, what it was to sacrifice a girlish romance because it was right to put away vain regret; to forget the things that are behind, and in this matter as in others, to use any sense of personal loss in such a way that it strengthened her character.

To pass from this subject, which, as it happens, does not appear to have had any place in the short period which elapsed between Casterton and Cheltenham, it is interesting to note what kinds of work Miss Beale considered with a view to taking them up.

Philanthropic occupations in the ordinary sense of the term she had had but few. Her duties as a tutor at Queen’s College were first undertaken when she was still eighteen, and up to then her time had been filled with interests arising from her own education and that of[62] her brothers. Yet, while at Queen’s, busy as she was, she had made time to aid one less fortunate than herself. In 1853 her friend Miss Alston consulted her how best to help a clever boy brought up in a charity school. Miss Beale volunteered to teach him Euclid and algebra, and for four months gave him a lesson a week in each of these subjects. In that time he went through the first four books of Euclid and part of the sixth. Miss Beale enjoyed these lessons, for her pupil was keen and intelligent and took a delight in working out things for himself. Doubtless he too responded to the teaching of one whose method was ever to lead a pupil on to perceive a truth before accepting it. When, after a time, he came under the instruction of the headmaster of a public school, the latter remarked to Miss Alston à propos of Miss Beale’s teaching: ‘What a well-balanced head your friend must have!’

She had never, however, been engaged in the Sunday School teaching and visiting of the poor, such as was not infrequently undertaken by thoughtful girls of her day. Her strong intellectual bent, her well-defined sense of purpose possibly kept her from even good occupations which might have seemed desultory. But one kind of work for others seems actually to have been considered. This was in connection with Mrs. Lancaster whom for some years Miss Beale had helped by collecting money for the Church Penitentiary Association, and for a Diocesan Home at Highgate. Mrs. Lancaster became in 1861 the founder of St. Peter’s Sisterhood. She died in 1874. ‘She was,’ says one who knew her, ‘a very remarkable woman, of great charm and cleverness, and wholly devoted to the service of God.’ Her letters to Miss Beale at this time show that she was at once drawn to her young helper, so active in[63] inspiring others to share in the good work, so punctual in her payments.

It was work in which Miss Beale was interested all her life, to which she gave largely, and which she ever promoted as far as her much filled time and thought permitted. Mrs. Lancaster greeted her first sign of interest with a warm welcome to the new worker. ‘Indeed, it was a great joy to me to see another drawn in by the Good Shepherd to help in seeking His lost sheep. May He bless and strengthen your will and power for the work.’

Dorothea appears to have been an assistant secretary, and to have collected money from her sisters and friends for this object. It is unnecessary, perhaps, to say that this money was always paid on the same date of each year.

After a time, when it seemed likely that Miss Beale would not remain at Casterton, Mrs. Lancaster obviously hoped to find in her one who would give up her life and talents to this cause. ‘I wish,’ she wrote, ‘for the sake of poor Penitents that you were more free, for I fancy you are a real, steady, orderly doer, and that is worth much in such a cause. Still, you do what you can, and may well be grateful to help in any way. Thank your sister too very much; it is very delightful to get young interest.’

Then, when an occasion arrived on which it was absolutely necessary to find a worker for the Highgate Home, she wrote: ‘Are you sure that you don’t know of a really good young lady not over accomplished, and she need know neither Greek nor Hindostanee, who would come and live at the Home, with a salary of £30 only, and poor people’s diet?’ This was followed by a still more practical suggestion: ‘Is there any chance[64] (I don’t like the word) of your liking to take the Headship of a large Penitentiary to be worked by Sisters, but the whole under strict, honest, English principles—more like Kaiserwerth than anything we have now?’ Dorothea’s answer seems to have emboldened Mrs. Lancaster to make a definite suggestion to her to come herself, either as a Sister or a lay worker, and the following note from Mrs. Lancaster, written during the summer holidays of the Casterton year, shows that the idea was to some extent entertained. It is interesting also in the history of the work and institution established by that lady.

It is probable that Mrs. Lancaster’s friendship and the glimpse of Sisterhood life which she obtained by means of it deepened the sense of vocation with which Miss Beale was prepared to take up the new work for which she was waiting in 1858. It may also have had its influence on outside matters such as dress, which we know, when engaged on her work of teaching, was in early days especially very plain and simple. Mrs. Lancaster was obviously a friend whom she revered, one to whom she could speak of religious matters, and with whose devoted work among poor women she fully sympathised; but the conventual side of it never really appealed to her.

Through Miss Twining, who began her work in 1850, Miss Beale became much interested in the reform of workhouses, and the idea even passed through her mind of seeking a position as matron in order to help to promote a better state of affairs. We can only wonder what would have been wrought had that great personality and unwearied diligence, that refusal to accept anything but the best, been brought to bear on the Poor Law, on Vestries, or Boards of Guardians.

The education of girls of her own class was of far deeper interest to her than any other work for women. She was trained for it, was conscious of her own power and knowledge of what a school should be, and she decided to wait till she could find a headship and carry out her own ideas. It was not quite easy to find the[66] post she wanted. As she put it herself, ‘They might say, “She could not get on at Queen’s, she could not get on at Casterton”’; and it is obvious from her diary, that though she was actually told as early as January 1858 of the possible vacancy at Cheltenham, she tried for more than one school before she was elected there in June.

While she waited, she worked. There was plenty of home interest, a pleasant circle of friends about her: she took her share in the life of others, and yet led her own and accomplished a large amount in those few months. During a part of this time she gave weekly lessons in mathematics and Latin at Miss Elwall’s school at Barnes, a school which afterwards became well known under Miss Eliza Beale, already in 1858 an assistant teacher there. But the great occupation of these months was The Student’s Textbook of English and General History.

In point of time this important work was the third book produced by Miss Beale, and a word on its first predecessor will not be out of place here.

The little volume on the Deaconesses’ Institution at Kaiserwerth was the outcome of a visit there during one of two summers passed in Germany for the sake of studying schools and foreign methods of education. Miss Beale stayed for a few days with the founder, Pastor Fliedner, and his wife, and studied each department of work. She was specially pleased with the Hospital and Sunday-school, of which she wrote with much appreciation: ‘I never was present at a lesson which seemed to give so much pleasure to children and listeners, as well as to the teacher, who certainly understood the art of drawing out children by means of questions.’

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Germany, its schools and similar institutions, its literature and language, even its handwriting, had a great attraction for Miss Beale. She had a few German lessons at the Paris school and afterwards worked at it alone, finally perfecting herself in the language by two long visits to the country, when she stayed principally at Brunswick and Dresden. On one occasion she resided for some time in a German family. In after years she would talk of this time to the girls at Cheltenham, telling them how she would make a point of conversing with the person she understood least easily at any gathering, inquiring the meaning of any word she did not know, to make use of it herself at the first opportunity. ‘And of course I did not mind being laughed at a little,’ she would add with a smile. Hence the praise that German ladies teaching at Cheltenham would accord her knowledge of the language, saying that she never made a mistake either in speaking or writing. She frequently made use of the German character in writing her diary.

The book on Kaiserwerth, written as it was for a special cause, has naturally long since had its day, though on its appearance it was accepted widely enough to justify the thought of a second edition. Mrs. Lancaster was greatly interested by it, and showed it to the Bishop of London,[22] who had just signed the Rule of the newly-founded Sisterhood. Both Bishop Jackson and Dean Trench declined, in friendly letters, dedications to themselves of a second edition, and none appears to have been issued; possibly on account of difficulties suggested by Mrs. Lancaster, who wished the scope of the book enlarged to embrace work of a similar nature in England. In the event of this being[68] done, she begged Miss Beale to add a notice of the infant Community of St. Peter’s, then in Broughton Square. To-day the book can scarcely be called extant, but there is certainly one copy in England and one in Kaiserwerth. It is interesting because it shows, like other writing of this time, the continuity of Miss Beale’s ideas and thoughts. Her sowing had been betimes and abundant, and she could already gather as she needed. She did not give till she had the wherewithal, and though in her long years she frequently sowed afresh—was ever disciple as well as teacher—she was an early husbandman, a wise householder, able continuously and opportunely to bring out things new and old. The simile of Jairus’s daughter, occurring for the first time in the passage quoted below, was one she often quoted in connection with that awakening of women’s energies it had been her lot to share; and one she finally enshrined for her children in the window placed in the College to the memory of Miss Buckoll in 1890. And like much of her later work, the little book shows also how much her religion went hand in hand with all her work for others. There was no thought of the emancipation of women, no word of rights; she spoke only of duties, of scope to do good; but even these were quite secondary to the desire, the will to make the effort, the ear to hear the bidding voice. Here is a passage to illustrate this:

Two other short extracts must be permitted:

Finally, the following passage tells how the strengthening thought of the Communion of Saints, of which she spoke to Miss Gore on the last Sunday of her life, was already beginning to be hers:

A second visit to Kaiserwerth, ten years later, gave Miss Beale great pleasure. She was delighted with the work being done and the extension of the small beginnings she had seen in 1856. In 1905, at Oeynhausen, she met accidentally a Deaconess of Kaiserwerth, was much attracted by her, and invited her to come and[70] see her and talk to her of the institution, and after her return to England exchanged letters with her.

The Textbook of History entailed a great deal of labour and study, which must have been a boon to its writer at a time of depression and uncertainty. Though the scheme of it was no doubt in her mind before she left Casterton, and the book was probably begun in the summer holidays of 1857, it was not till after Christmas that she was free to devote herself to it. Then she threw into the work every hour she could justly secure, striving at the same time not to neglect family claims. The conditions under which it was done were little short of heroic. In order to secure freedom from interruption both for herself and her books of reference, she chose for her study a large empty room, where she worked in the midst of open volumes spread round her on the floor. It was winter, but she was glad to avail herself of the difficulty of keeping up a daily fire at the top of the old City house, in order to give less attraction to any other members of the household to sit with her and take up time in conversation. The empty grate by which she wrote lends significance to an entry in the diary of March 1858: ‘Self-indulgence because of cold.’ The self-denial and concentration of the writer bore early fruit, for this book, a digest of world-wide histories, was published in August 1858, just after its author had come to Cheltenham. The production of this textbook is an instance of the way in which Miss Beale would see and seize an opportunity. There was a real need for such a work. In her introduction she alludes to objections which could be raised to similar books then in use, and which were stated in articles which appeared in the Times of January 1857.

Miss Beale’s reference is doubtless to two letters[71] headed ‘The Corruption of Popular School Books.’ The first of these, by the noted Dr. Cumming, appeared on January 17, and dealt with certain changes which had been made, in a Romish direction, in a widely used textbook of English history by Henry Ince. A new edition had lately appeared, professing itself to be much extended and improved, in wide circulation, and sanctioned by her Majesty’s Committee of the Council of Education. This edition, pleaded the writer of the Times letter, contained statements which made it ‘unsuitable for use in Protestant schools.’ Those quoted, e.g. that ‘Queen Elizabeth was a mistress in the art of dissembling,’ do not seem very reprehensible, but enough savour of Papistry had been introduced into the book to cause the Committee above-mentioned and the Society of Arts to strike the book off their lists. Dorothea Beale was quick to see and seize the opportunity thus afforded for a new textbook.

The very large scope of the work, embracing as it does the whole history of the world since the beginning of the Christian era, with the history of England given in rather fuller detail than the rest, makes it imperative that its hundred and seventy closely printed pages should be rather dry. The Textbook is intended for the teacher rather than the pupil; highly useful in its arrangement of facts, and names, and suggestions of ideas, but not in itself a complete lesson-book. Its clearness and fulness are not more characteristic of the writer than the dramatic instinct which led her to give such names, titles, and short quotations as tend at once to fix a fact in the memory, and to conjure up visions of the conditions under which such and such events took place. Miss Beale had a remarkable quickness in seizing on the important matter and stating it in a few telling[72] words. It is interesting to take at haphazard her history of any century, and mark what a wealth of interest rather than of information is brought together in a few short pages to stimulate the reader’s thirst for knowledge. But it is sufficient to point out the titles chosen for the centuries, as showing what seemed to her of greatest importance to the progress of mankind.[26]

The book is completed with an account of the English Constitution and some genealogical tables. It reached a seventh edition, but Miss Beale was disinclined to bring it up to quite modern times, doubtless because she felt there are now other books to cover the ground as well or better than her own. Consequently the nineteenth century is left uncompleted. The book, however, played a useful part at a time when the teaching of history was very imperfect, and was well received by those who knew its author. ‘The plan of the book,’ wrote Mr. Plumptre, ‘seems to me very good, and I cannot doubt that you have carried into the details the same painstaking accuracy with which we used to be familiar in your work with us.’

Mr. Mackenzie, at the writer’s request, made an elaborate criticism, from which it is enough to quote his ‘chief complaint’: ‘Your unfairness to your own sex, and your willingness to believe and repeat the calumnies uttered against them by male writers, a fault to which the old monks were especially prone; but they were not quite silent, as you are, upon the virtues of the royal and noble Anglo-Saxon ladies, who did so much, even in the darkest ages, towards educating and refining the barbarous people by whom they were surrounded.’

Mr. Beale mentioned it more than once in his letters to the daughter in whose talent he had such pride:[73] ‘The success of your little book is very encouraging. E. says they call it “Beale’s Ince.” ... I dined at the Adams’ last week, a doctor’s party. Dr. Daldy was loud in praise of the Textbook.’ And again, ‘Underneath D. Beale in my own copy I have written “sed summa sequar festigia rerum.”’ And to the end it was a source of satisfaction to the writer herself. ‘You could not have done so well without my Textbook, could you?’ she said to an old pupil whose Histories for Schools have been widely accepted.

The third work of this period was a little book entitled Self-Examination. This was chiefly designed for schools, and was edited by Mr. Denton, the vicar of St. Bartholomew’s, Moor Lane. This book, too, written when books of devotion were far less common than they are now, and in order to supply a real need of schoolgirls, has been long superseded by others, but in many cases the works for which it has been put on one side are less thoughtful and penetrating. The questions and meditations are arranged round the subjects of ‘My Duty towards God, and my Duty towards my Neighbour,’ and with the comment of verses from the Bible are presented in that tabular form which Miss Beale loved.[27] The actual questions for self-examination are throughout slight and few in proportion to what is suggested by the Scripture texts and the meditations; the reason doubtless being to make the reader think for herself.

This little work brings us face to face with that religion which all her life long was the motive power of Dorothea’s life. Deep religious feeling was no phase nor change of thought which came to her with years or experience. It was not wrought for her in the furnace[74] of sorrow, though many times there renewed and purified. It was so much the dominating force of her mind and life, that, by which every day as every year she was controlled and inspired, that it may be reverently regarded as a special gift to one called to a great service. ‘I cannot,’ she wrote, ‘look back upon the time when God was not a present Friend. I would throw myself on my knees in trouble, and He gave of His compassion. How (as a child) I used to follow the service and wish it were possible to think of what God was;—to think of Him as mere Light was the nearest approach.’ And as an old woman—despite the love of friends, and her well-deserved honours, often alone and sick and weary—she wrote, ‘The Lord is my Light.’ But the religion of Dorothea Beale 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. Sorrow and regret for sin and mistakes passed into fresh effort against them; the perception of a beautiful thought or idea became a new motive for definite acts of charity and diligence. With regard to such a religious life as hers, the mind dwelling habitually in a region which is beyond controversy, it seems like a descent to a lower plane to speak of religious opinions. Yet no approximately true history of her can be related without reference to these. Even if there were no record of it as there is, it is obvious that one at once so large-minded and clear-headed, whose life displayed so much organisation and arrangement, must[75] have definitely faced the great problems of eternity, must have listened to every appeal of Christianity, and with her own eyes have looked up each avenue of thought which promised an approach to Truth. And this she undoubtedly did. But in the knowledge of Divine things, as in that which she would scarcely permit to be called secular, her faithfulness and simple obedience to early teaching directed her mind to certain religious duties and opinions from which she never parted: ‘If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine,’ is a text she was fond of quoting to her Scripture classes. She lived to realise it. Very early and continuously she ruled her life by the commandments of the Lord, and when storms arose, when winds and floods of doubt threatened ruin, when she was herself ready to cry, ‘All is gone,’ the foundations of the house of faith were yet secure, and thereon love rebuilt.

And so it may be truly said that the framework of her personal religion was in age what it had been in youth. She had her own distinctly outlined path to which she had been guided early by such friends as her father and Mr. Mackenzie. This has been sometimes lost sight of, possibly owing to her deep sympathy and interest in matters of doubt and difficulty. When any of her children turned to her in distress of this nature, she felt, more than at any other time, the yearning of a mother’s heart, and was fearful of saying any word or even of showing any opinion of her own which might alarm or seal up confidence. Hence people of widely different views wished to claim her as of their own way of thinking when often she was not. She did not think it of paramount importance when speaking to the unorthodox, or even to the agnostic, to state her own beliefs precisely. She did not seek to proselytise but[76] to help, to remove, as far as power was given her, all hindrances to the light, to persuade those who were in darkness still to obey. But she knew that she could not make any see; she recognised faith as the gift of God.

Miles Beale was a Churchman of the type known best by its nickname ‘High and Dry.’ His daughters were still quite young when they found this was a school to which not all the world belonged, and they began to appreciate religious differences. They heard, between St. Helen’s and St. Bartholomew’s, preachers of varying shades of thought. Mr. Mackenzie was succeeded at St. Helen’s by an incumbent of evangelical views. Some of Mr. Denton’s curates at St. Bartholomew’s went over to Rome; one became Father Ignatius.

Dorothea was only sixteen when her father wrote to her on the subject of the Hampden-Gorham dispute, as of a matter she well understood and found interesting. And this recalls the fact that religious controversy of that day raged specially round the question of Baptismal Regeneration. A letter written to the Council of the Ladies’ College after her appointment[28] shows how clearly and concisely, and without reference to books, Miss Beale could state her opinions. It deals with her views of the Sacraments, marking her religious position at the time and indeed to the end;—it was for her Prayer-book that she asked in the one clear moment of the last unconsciousness. This letter contains a bare, unemotional statement of belief, to which may well be added this: that while she held firmly the doctrine of ‘Two only, as generally necessary to salvation,’ the life of grace through the Sacraments was the power by which she lived. She recognised herself as fortunate in[77] her special heritage of Christian thought, writing of it thus:—

When quite young she began the practice of Sunday Communion, and many a week day found her at the 6 A.M. celebration at St. Bartholomew’s Church. From first to last her scanty diary records this service among the leading facts of ordinary life.

In the power thus gained she had ever before her the thought of co-operation, of working out salvation, of putting on Christ by daily dying to self by minute watchfulness, and in every sense of the word painstaking diligence. At a time when the pulpits of Cheltenham were ringing with statements which seemed to her to misrepresent the great doctrine of the Atonement, she was speaking to her children of the true nature of the Redeemer’s Blood, of the living stream flowing from the Heart through all the members; she was seeking for herself and for them the righteousness of Christ, not as a mere substitution, but as a real attainment won by the union of a soul wholly surrendered to the workings of the grace of God.

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This chapter may fitly close with a passage from the diary, which she appears to have begun to keep for the first time this year, when she was to some extent forced back upon herself, when she was making her own scheme of daily work. Begun on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1858, it was continued intermittently at least to 1901, when the increasing infirmities of age made all reading and writing difficult. Sometimes dropped for many months, it was taken up again as if with the suggestion of a sense of culpability for neglect. It was never full; never, so far as outward events are concerned, of any great interest. Some of these, indeed, as the writing of certain letters, the visits of certain friends, or business engagements, are just mentioned and no more; doubtless for the sake of reference only. It remains for us as a revelation of the keen self-scrutiny with which she, who had to guide and warn others, was daily searching her own soul. Very often for weeks there is no mention of anything done, or seen, or thought as far as the matters of this world are concerned; but she never failed to note what she regarded as the real life, spiritual growth or the reverse, right or wrong conduct, faithful or unfaithful performance of religious duties. This diary cannot be ignored if a true presentment of Dorothea Beale is to be given. Hence, intimate as it is, enough extracts as may display the persistent effort of her life are inserted here. They are not consecutive, but chosen as characteristic and interesting, and showing to some extent the occupations of the period. Scanty traces indeed of what she was doing and thinking, they are yet enough to show a little of the anxiety and conflict of which she wrote in 1901 to Miss Margaret Richardson, in these words: ‘Once I had an interval of work, and I thought perhaps[79] 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.’

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CHAPTER V
CHELTENHAM

Dorothea Beale in age remembered that in youth she had planned ‘an air-castle school, with a central quadrangle, cloisters and rooms over.’

To few is it given, as it was given to her, to realise so nearly the dreams of youth, for few possess the sense of purpose and the indomitable will which fell to her portion. But the college of her vision did not come into being without a process of development so slow that for some years progress could hardly be recorded, nor without infinite disappointment even in matters which seemed at the time vital; not without ceaseless effort, seen and unseen, on the part of the Lady Principal.

We have reached, in the twentieth century, a period in the history of education in which schools may be said to be founded ready-made. A great and fine ‘plant,’ opening ceremonies, royal patronage, appear necessities from the beginning. The Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, was twenty years old before it had a building of its own, its first stone was laid by an unknown hand, its opening rite consisted of school prayers in the ordinary way on a Monday morning, at 9 A.M., with the addition of a few words rather nervously read by the Lady Principal. The college has never had a patron, nor did it even have any specially distinguished visitor, till the Empress Frederick came in 1897.

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The Ladies’ College did not originate with Miss Beale. She brought to it, when it was but a weakling and like to perish, all her dreams and all her energies. She made it emphatically her own; but its first inception was with a small number of Cheltenham residents, notably with the Reverend H. Walford Bellairs, then H.M. Inspector of Schools for Gloucestershire,[30] and the Reverend C. A. Bromby,[31] Principal of the Training Colleges. Its foundation was a continuation of work already begun in the town with the opening of Cheltenham College, in 1843. This was one of the earliest of the great nineteenth century public schools, and one of the very few which has no ancient origin. A very slight glance at the history of the town, which has produced two great colleges, will serve to show that their work in its midst has been almost that of a quiet and beneficent revolution.

The mild air and fertile soil of the great plain below the Cotswold Hills were recognised as early as the days of Edward the Confessor, when Cheltenham was called upon to furnish a large amount of bread for the royal kennels. For centuries only a little market town with a beautiful Early Gothic church on the banks of an insignificant stream, it crept out of obscurity in the pages of Ogilby who, in 1785, described it as inhabited by people ‘much given to plant tobacco, though they are suppressed by authority.’

Forty years after this the discovery of the medicinal properties of its waters made the place attractive to those who could afford to take the remedy, and in the later years of George the Third, it came to be the ‘Queen of watering places.’ Details of the long royal visit of 1788[83] may be read in the pages of Fanny Burney and others. The King would afterwards speak of Cheltenham and the Vale of Gloucester as ‘the finest part of my kingdom that I have beheld.’ Other distinguished visitors followed: the Prince Regent, who gave a ball; Charles James Fox; Wellington, within a year of Waterloo; Louis Philippe and Marie Amélie in their exile; and many others, among whom, as a boy, came Byron, to wander, according to a continental biographer, ‘on the seashore at Cheltenham!’

As late as 1870 there was in Cheltenham scarcely a house which did not testify by its grandiose, pseudo-classic[32] architecture to the past magnificence of a town which had striven to be worthy of a court. Even to-day there are but few which do not follow the lines laid down by the builders of the early years of the nineteenth century, a time at which the town grew with mushroom speed. It was a period when population was rapidly increasing all over the country; but in few places were the leaps and bounds so marked as in Cheltenham, where in 1840, a census return was tenfold larger than it had been in 1804.

This rapid growth was due, less to the famous wells and pump-rooms than to the reputation of its climate, and the absence of any great winter severity, attractive to those who had lived in tropical countries. Hence Cheltenham became a favourite residence for Anglo-Indians, military and civil. The town grew perhaps a little less distinguished, but not less gay and popular. The fashion in Cheltenham waters passed; kings and dukes sought their ‘cure’ abroad; but it was possible to have balls and other amusements without a Prince Regent, while the[84] hunting season especially became a time of festivity. And side by side with the lovers of pleasure, who formed so large and sparkling a part of Cheltenham society, existed those who took all life with deep, almost forbidding seriousness.

To meet the needs of the rapidly growing population during the first forty years of the nineteenth century, several churches were built under the auspices of different persons. Church-building in the days of proprietary sittings was a not unprofitable investment; there were also liberal benefactors to support Mr. Close, who was incumbent of Cheltenham for nearly thirty years, in his schemes for the welfare of his flock.

Francis Close, a disciple of Charles Simeon, came to Cheltenham in 1824, as curate-in-charge of Holy Trinity, a newly erected chapel-of-ease to the parish church. The living of Cheltenham was already at that time in the hands of Simeon, who had purchased it from its various patrons, and presented it to the Reverend C. Jervis. On the death of Mr. Jervis, Simeon appointed young Close to this important charge. From the first Mr. Close was a very popular preacher. ‘It was,’ says an admirer, ‘a new and interesting sight to see so singularly handsome a young man filled with such religious zeal.’ A man of pronounced and narrow views, immense activity and determination, combined with geniality and cheerfulness, he sought to regulate the ways of society, and to some extent succeeded. He ruled the town from the pulpit of the parish church as from a throne, and earned, among those who loved him least, the name of the ‘Pope of Cheltenham.’[33] He preached against racing,[85] acting, dancing. But if, as has been said, he established dinner-parties and destroyed the theatre, he acted only with others of his school of thought. Those were the days of eating and drinking, since some form of recreation was necessary, and, moreover, abstinence had a suspiciously Roman look. They were days when all forms of art, not that of the theatre alone, were regarded with distrust. It is true that Mr. Close gave a lecture on ‘Literature and the Fine Arts considered as Legitimate Pursuits of a Religious Man’; he also preached a sermon entitled ‘The Restoration of Churches is the Restoration of Popery,’ and he said to the head-mistress of a fashionable boarding-school where dancing was included in the curriculum: ‘When Mrs. Close wished my daughters taught dancing, I reminded her of her marriage vow.’

Mr. Close’s energies took visible and permanent shape in the buildings which arose during his long incumbency. Eight churches grew up around the parish church, but that, alas! was not their model. Most of the new ones displayed all the worst features of a debased style of church architecture: a diminutive chancel, three-decker arrangements for parson and clerk, high pews, with safe doors for the congregation.

National schools were built, and training colleges founded, also under the direction of Mr. Close, and he took his share in the institution of the Proprietary College for Boys, in 1843.

With the new churches came new clergy, among whom, the most popular name at the time, was that of Archibald Boyd, vicar of Christchurch, a very eloquent preacher who brought the little schoolroom in the hamlet of Alstone, where he lectured on Sunday evenings, into rivalry with the parish church. To-day, he is famous[86] for having had as his curate, for five years, the young Frederick Robertson, whose afternoon sermons at Christchurch, in spite of the suspicion of unorthodoxy which early began to attach itself to his name, drew many thoughtful hearers, such as the Principal of Cheltenham College.

The most leading mind at the time among the younger clergy was that of Charles Henry Bromby, who became vicar of St. Paul’s in 1843. He was a man of large mental gifts, and had special perception of the intellectual needs of his day. The Working Men’s Club, which he established in his parish, was among the very first in the country. All the great educational institutions of Cheltenham are indebted to his outlook and zeal. Joint-founder of Cheltenham College, and later, though he took no public part and earned no name in the matter, of that for ‘Young Ladies and Children,’ his most active interest and work was for the teaching of the poor. He became first Principal of the Training Colleges[34] for headmasters and mistresses of national schools, starting the work on wise and secure lines, and rapidly bringing it to the front among that of kindred institutions.

Mr. Bellairs was actively as well as zealously associated with Mr. Bromby in all the great schemes, by which Cheltenham, rich and poor, was to be enlightened, and in the case of the Proprietary College for Ladies, it is his name which comes to the front, and it was in his house that the first meeting to draw up its constitution was held.

There was every reason to hope that a high-class day-school for girls, then almost unknown, might succeed in Cheltenham, where parents had had a successful experience[87] of such a school for their boys. Everywhere, people, who cared about a good education for girls, found it difficult to obtain even at great cost. Many liked to keep their children with them; those who were indifferent would be glad to avail themselves of the cheaper method of the day-school, provided it could be run on exclusive lines. There had been for some years in the town, select boarding schools, where a few day-scholars were received. The advantage over these of a large public school, necessarily of a more permanent character than a small private institution could be, was obvious.

At the meeting in the house of Mr. Bellairs, on September 30, 1853, a date which Miss Beale has noted as the birthday of the Ladies’ College, there were present but three others. These were the Reverend W. Dobson, Principal of Cheltenham College, the Reverend H. A. Holden, Vice-Principal, and Dr. S. E. Comyn. One other gentleman should be named among these early builders, namely, Mr. Nathaniel Hartland. Colonel Fitzmaurice was also a member of the first council.

The founders of this college and day-school for girls were anxious to make it clear that their aim was to develop in the pupils character and fitness for the duties of later life. Hence the first report states that it was intended ‘to afford, on reasonable terms, an education based upon religious principles which, preserving the modesty and gentleness of the female character, should so far cultivate [a girl’s] intellectual powers as to fit her for the discharge of those responsible duties which devolve upon her as a wife, mother, mistress and friend, the natural companion and helpmeet for man.’ In framing the constitutions Mr. Bellairs and his colleagues had before their minds the successful College for Boys, and[88] adopted its rules with regard to religious instruction, and the social rank of the pupils.

The draft of the resolutions, made at the first meeting, may still be read. Hardly less remarkable than the development of later days is the permanent nature of the impress given to the College at its first start. Some of the resolutions were:—

With few alterations these resolutions passed into the prospectus issued to the public in November 1853, an exact copy of which will be found in the appendix.[35] Experimental prospectuses, which never left the hands of[89] the Committee, exist to show how the founders formed and modified their views for the College. It was proposed at one time to have a noble patron and a visitor, besides the working Committee; but as Miss Beale somewhat whimsically relates, this was found to be impracticable. ‘It was thought that it would add to the prestige of the College, and diminish the prejudice which then existed, to have a distinguished patron, and so Lord de Saumerez, then resident in Cheltenham, was applied to, but in vain. So there was no Patron.’[36] There was also no visitor until 1875, when Dr. Ellicott, then Bishop of Gloucester, kindly undertook the charge. The difficulty of securing patronage was probably what caused the Council, in virtue of one of their own rules, to invite Mr. Close to accept the office of President, with a seat at the Board. At the same time Mr. Bellairs was appointed Vice-President.

In the first instance it was intended that the College should be confined to day-scholars; then, in case this restriction should limit the scope of the work and perhaps injure it financially, a sort of half-measure was planned, and it was proposed to state that: ‘the Committee will not interfere with any arrangements made by the Parents and Friends of pupils for Boarding their Children, provided the numbers in any given Boarding-House do not exceed six. Should Boarding-Houses ever be opened offering accommodation to a greater number of pupils than six, the Committee reserve to themselves the power of insisting upon and conferring a License, before Children in such Boarding-Houses be allowed the privilege of becoming Students in the College.’

As early as the 1st of November three ladies had been found to undertake boarding-houses, and they were not[90] restricted as to numbers. The low terms of the boarding-houses (£40 a year including all expenses, of course without the tuition fees) suggest that the ideas of the liberal-minded Committee may have forestalled those of the future Lady Principal, ever eager to help on those who deserved but could not afford education. The tuition fees were on the same low scale; from six guineas to twenty guineas, and including pianoforte lessons, class singing, elementary drawing and needlework, besides English subjects and French.

Shares had been taken up to the number of one hundred and fifty-seven, so the Council had enough money at their disposal to justify the necessary initial outlay. After an unsuccessful effort to obtain Lake House, which its owner declined to let for the purposes of a school, Cambray House, a fine old Georgian building with a beautiful garden, was taken at a rent of £200 a year. Some hundreds of pounds were spent in making this house suitable for its purpose, arranging a schoolroom (40 by 30 feet), a system of heating, and so on, while a part of it was set aside as a residence for the Lady Principal. The Committee appointed in this capacity Mrs. Procter, widow of Colonel Procter, ‘a highly educated officer,’ but her daughter Annie Procter, who was called Vice-Principal, was the actual head of the College. ‘The former,’ ran the first report, ‘is possessed of that age and experience which are necessary for the training of the young; the latter of that youth and vigour which are necessary for teaching.’ A younger sister had the post of assistant secretary, and several regular teachers and professors were also appointed.

Cambray House.
From an old engraving.

The College was actually opened on February 13, 1854, the pupils, eighty-two in number, having been examined a week before that date. Thus the inauguration[91] ceremony was the actual beginning of work. When writing her Jubilee history of the College, Miss Beale collected reminiscences from some who were present on the opening day. Nothing more impressive was forthcoming than a scrimmage of dogs in the cloak-room, the calling over of names, followed by immediate sorting into classes already arranged as a result of the examination, and that ‘various old gentlemen promenaded about the first few days, and held conclaves in a Board-Room on the right hand of the front door.’ The age of the pupils varied considerably from that of tiny mites to that of grown-up girls. They were arranged in different departments, the lowest being a kind of infant school on raised benches.

At first the numbers increased rapidly, and by the end of the year there were one hundred and twenty pupils. But the fees were too low, and the Committee soon had cause for anxiety over expenses. In the first year, 1854, more than £1300 was expended in regular salaries and in payments to visiting teachers; the accounts in December showed a deficit of £400. Matters improved but slowly in 1855, and in order to lessen expenses, various changes were suggested, such as the substitution of German, which the Vice-Principal could teach, for Latin, and an arrangement by which the pianoforte should be taught on a class system. In the general meeting of that year, it was resolved no longer to admit boys to the College, and with them disappeared the whole of the infant department, not to reappear till the Kindergarten was opened in 1882.

This change led to a slight diminution of numbers, and the report of the year 1856 (published in and dated February 1857), while it embodied many words of praise from the examiners and showed a balance of receipts[92] above expenditure in the current expenses, yet breathed a consciousness of many difficulties and obstacles to be overcome. It was acknowledged that had it been desirable to purchase furniture for the Lady Principal instead of paying her £25 a year for the use of her own, it could not have been done from the funds in hand. ‘In conclusion,’ said the Chairman, ‘your Council beg to express their thanks to those parents who, during the past year, have continued to place confidence in the College and its system. On their own part and on that of the Lady Principal and the Vice-Principal, they desire to assure the public that no efforts shall be wanting on their part to amend what may appear, on mature consideration, to be defective.... They cannot depart from their fundamental principle, which, as they stated, is soundness rather than show; magna est veritas et prævalebit.’

Next year, 1857, the numbers crept down, first to ninety-three, then to eighty-nine, and the capital account, which had never gone up, was little above £400. Shares which should have been £10, were offered for half that sum. The want of success was partly due to want of harmony between Miss Procter and the Council on points of educational method. In May 1858, when the numbers were again reduced, and the prospect of improvement very small, the Procters resigned; also the ladies who took boarders one by one gave up. So poor was the outlook for the College at this time that the Council might have felt justified in abandoning the whole scheme. Fortunately, however, those who possessed the foresight and courage, which could still carry it on, were supported by the circumstance that the lease of Cambray House had a couple more years to run. So it came to pass that in May 1858, within a fortnight of Miss Procter’s resignation, the Council advertised for a Lady Principal thus:—

[93]

The shareholders requested a general meeting in order to receive an explanation of the cause which led to the resignation of Miss Procter, and this was convened for June 2. The Committee was occupied during the fortnight which succeeded this in selecting and interviewing some of the fifty candidates for the Headship, and Miss Beale was elected on June 13. In July Miss Procter took her final leave in the following letter to Mr. Hartland:—

Miss Beale heard of a vacancy on the staff of the[94] Ladies’ College in January 1858, when a Queen’s College friend, Miss Mulcaster, wrote her a letter interesting for the glimpses it gives both of Casterton and Cheltenham.

Miss Beale must have answered this, and probably wrote at the same time to Miss Brewer, whom she had known at Queen’s; but there are no further letters existing on the subject. But she herself told in later life that she declined to apply for the post as she had resolved to seek a Headship. There is no mention of Cheltenham in the diary until May, but it appears that other schools were either applied for or considered. On February 17 we have ‘For school at Holloway.’ On February 18, ‘A letter from a Greenwich school.’ This was perhaps visited on the 22nd, when the diary mentions a journey to Greenwich; but it is not named[95] again. On March 2 we find ‘Mamma wrote to Mrs. Birch about school at Reigate.’ On March 24, ‘Talked to Mr. Hyde about College at Camberwell.’ This possibly appears again in the record of April 17: ‘Mary decides against Camberwell scheme.’

A letter mentioned in Miss Beale’s diary as received from Cheltenham on May 18 was doubtless in answer to her application, after the advertisement had appeared, to inform her that she was accepted as a candidate for the vacant Headship. The record of the next few weeks, brief as it is, bears marks of the zeal and activity with which everything possible was done to procure testimonials and the recommendations of friends; while, at the same time, the work went on at Barnes, and the sheets of the Textbook were passing through the press. The writer was obviously full of anxiety and hope, having perceived in Cheltenham a promising sphere of work; but she did not relax the daily spiritual combat to which we owe the existence of the diary.

On receipt of a favourable answer she went at once to see Mr. Plumptre, and wrote to Dr. Trench. After the Casterton experience it was necessary to have further recommendations than those which she had taken there from Queen’s College. Among the friends to whom she wrote was Mrs. Lancaster, who replied by return:—

In the course of the next fortnight many more letters were received. Among them one from Miss Elwall of the Barnes School. She wrote:—

One from Mrs. Curling, the wife of Dr. Curling, an eminent physician and her father’s friend, runs:—

Some friends wrote direct to the Cheltenham Council. The testimony borne to Miss Beale’s high character is genuine and strong, if quaintly expressed according to present-day notions in some of these. Mr. Shepheard wrote:—

and Miss Reynolds privately approached Mr. Bellairs:—

The most interesting of this series of letters is one from Miss Alston to Mrs. Lancaster. This, through Mr. Bellairs, undoubtedly helped to influence the Council, whose members were wise enough to seek for character as much as attainment in the new Head. Others had dwelt on Miss Beale’s talent and power and single-hearted devotion to her calling; Miss Alston could also speak of her life and value at home.

On June 14 came a letter summoning Miss Beale to Cheltenham. Her diary does not tell us where she stayed, or give any particulars of the interviews she had with the Council as a body, or with individuals. It records her election on the 16th, and the fact that Mr. Bellairs came to breakfast on the 17th. On the same day she saw Mr. Hartland and Dr. Comyn. By the single word ‘dress,’ which concludes her meagre entries of what were such momentous events for her, hangs a little tale of personal need supplied by the kind thought of a sister who willingly lent a blue silk gown for the would-be Lady Principal to wear at her first interview with her Council. Absorption in the Textbook and kindred subjects had precluded care of the writer’s wardrobe, and when this important moment came, it was felt that neither the simple black nor the mouse-coloured grey was equal to the occasion.[99] The conscientious care of the borrowed plumes is still remembered.

On June 18 she returned from Cheltenham, full of hope, to write innumerable letters—stamps, under their ancient name of ‘heads,’ became almost a daily entrance in the diary, which sometimes served as account-book;—to finish the lessons at Barnes, for the school year had not yet ended; and to correct the proofs of the Textbook, with the satisfaction of feeling that she had in it something that would help in the formation of her teachers-to-be. She received many congratulations. Some letters were kept; Mr. Shepheard’s is given, as it bears upon a subject which was about to cause fresh trouble.

There were also through these weeks a good many interchanged visits on matters both of business and pleasure. The name of Miss Vincent occurs twice among others mentioned in the diary. This is the lady who in August of 1858 became Lady Superintendent at[100] Casterton, and remained there till 1888, when she died there in harness at the age of seventy-five.

Dorothea Beale was not, however, destined to take possession of her kingdom without a conflict. The old religious dispute was handed on from Casterton, for Mr. Shepheard, with one other whose name does not appear, felt he could not but mention the points he held to be ‘dangerous’ in her religious beliefs. And there was certainly still another letter to discourage the Council, from M. Mariette to Mr. Penrice Bell, questioning Miss Beale’s suitability for the post of Head Mistress on the ground that she was not sympathetic in manner. This appears to have been disregarded, but the partisans of Dean Close felt bound to consider the accusation of High Church opinions. Miss Beale first learned of the opposition which had arisen to her appointment on July 12, in the following letter from Mr. Bell:—

This letter, which must have come as a bolt from the blue, was a blow, but not of a crushing nature to one[102] whose energies were ever braced by conflict. Miss Beale wrote at once to Mr. Bellairs to tell him what had happened, and to Mr. Bell in answer to his attack. Both letters are given, as they clearly state her religious position. To Mr. Bellairs she wrote:—

To Mr. Penrice Bell:—

The diary of these two days gives a hint of the anxiety[105] Miss Beale underwent when the attack was made upon her, and before she could receive answers to her own letters:—

Mr. Bell’s reply to Miss Beale’s letter suggests that the difficulty before the Council was less directly one of religious principle than that of working a school where certain precise opinions were not professed.

Among Miss Beale’s papers exists an undated and much erased note, which appears to be her answer to the above. It begins with the remark: ‘I am glad to find the Council has not decided that I am so great a heretic as from your first letter I feared they would’; and it closes with the statement: ‘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 will feel I should be unworthy of your confidence could I through any fear of consequences resort to the least untruthfulness.’ Meanwhile Mr. Bellairs also wrote:—

The storm was over. Though individuals of quite opposing views would, later on, occasionally cavil at[107] points in Miss Beale’s method of teaching Scripture, she never really experienced further trouble on this ground. There are many, like the unknown lady to whose ‘High Church’ opinions the Council took objection, who would have felt they could not work in the spirit of compromise implied in the letters of Mr. Bell and Mr. Bellairs. There are some who might have agreed to do so, and in terror of offending, would have shirked the difficult task of religious instruction to the point of making it a lifeless thing. Miss Beale undertook it with her eyes open, and in spite, or possibly because of the hindrances in the way, her Scripture lessons became the very pivot of her teaching.

The diary again is very characteristic at this point. The anxiety of mind caused by her trouble was not permitted to excuse ill-temper. ‘July 4. Letter from Cheltenham. Neglect of prayer. Several times rude.’ This was the day which practically settled the fate of the Ladies’ College, and was the greatest visible landmark in Miss Beale’s life. In the ensuing fortnight, the last she spent at home, though there is an entry for every day, the name of Cheltenham does not occur. Two visits from Miss Brewer, who had been re-appointed to the Cheltenham staff with the title of Vice-Principal, ‘shopping,’ and ‘turning out,’ suggest preparations. There is no entry of the day on which she went, but from deduction it was August 4, and in the company of her mother.

[108]

CHAPTER VI
EARLY HISTORY OF THE LADIES’ COLLEGE

Cambray House, which was Miss Beale’s home for fifteen years, is one of the finest buildings erected in the period when Cheltenham was being laid out with a view to royal visits. The Duke of Wellington himself stayed there in 1823.

Miss Dorothea Beale
1859.

The garden, mentioned in the early College reports as the ‘pleasure grounds,’ was a special delight to Miss Beale. In 1858 it was still untouched, and had many beautiful trees; one, a standard apricot tree, was—happy omen! covered with golden fruit in that first autumn of her life at Cheltenham. The house itself was beginning to change its character of family residence to that of a[109] building adapted for school purposes, and before very long even the rooms given up for the use of the Principal and the Vice-Principal were encroached upon. Nor were those rooms furnished in character with the stately outside of the house. ‘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.’[38] To such domestic details Miss Beale was indifferent, but it must have been less easy to practise an economy which limited the extension of her work. ‘The teaching staff was reduced as low as possible, and the Principal and Vice-Principal gave up their half-holiday to chaperone those who took lessons from masters. The Principal taught all the English subjects to Classes I. and II., besides giving weekly lessons in Holy Scripture throughout the College.’

So long as the chief task of the Lady Principal was to prevent the College losing further ground, so long as her time and thought outside school hours were absorbed by anxiety over every pupil who came and went, still more over those who failed to come, there could be no rapid process of development. But it would have been impossible for Miss Beale to take up an existing educational work without at once making her individual mark upon it, and from the first the school felt the grasp of her able hand. At Casterton she had longed at once to change, to reform. At Cheltenham remodelling rather than revolution was her aim—fulfilment and wise development.

To understand the way in which she gave fresh life, and gradually refashioned the methods she found, it is[110] necessary to go back to the prehistoric days before her arrival in 1858. There is little record of the educational system and teaching of that period, but it is certain that both were liberal and thorough, free from narrowness and petty tyranny, in advance of those existing in the ordinary boarding-school of the day. The curriculum, it is noteworthy, was arranged with a view to developing the mind and character. Latin was taught at first ‘very thoroughly,’ and the change by which after the first year it was replaced by German, which the Lady Principal could teach, was a question of economy, not of conciliation of parents who might think dead languages useless subjects of study. In making the substitution it was hoped, so runs the report of 1856, that instruction in German ‘might be made equally instrumental with that in the Latin language for conveying an accurate, exact, and logical knowledge of the principles of general Grammar. In this impression (your Council) find ... that they have not been mistaken.’

This attitude with regard to German was no new idea to Miss Beale, and she pursued the aims of the founders when she made the language a necessary subject of study for all pupils above the lower classes. Latin she discouraged, except in the case of those who were near the top of the College, maintaining that girls of seventeen and eighteen could learn in a few months as much Latin as would absorb the greater part of a boy’s whole time at school.

On the question of music the founders had shown themselves out of sympathy with the fashionable practice of a day when every ‘young lady’ was expected to perform on the piano, every governess to teach it. They conceded so far as to include music in the regular curriculum, but the expense of providing the requisite number[111] of teachers and pianos for so many pupils was heavy. To meet this a system of class instruction was devised, by which the teacher gave a lesson to four pupils at once, the same piece being performed simultaneously on the treble and bass of two pianos. Whether such an arrangement was conducive to the production of good music or the formation of taste may be doubted. It suggests, indeed, a certain irony in those who hit upon a scheme that might just satisfy a foolish popular demand, assured that any who really cared for music would not grudge payment to the good teachers provided for the extra classes. The music difficulty occupies some space in the early reports which, in somewhat stilted and solemn fashion, set forth new ideals for the education of the ‘fairer sex.’ The following is quoted from the report of February 1856:—

These remarks were followed in 1857 by others:—

[112]

The College had opened with a goodly array of teachers of ‘accomplishments,’ as it was hoped thus to attract bye-students. These were gradually dismissed, and it cannot have added to the reputation of the school that some of the best-known masters, such as M. Théodore Colson, were considered too expensive. When the new Principal came there were only two teachers of music, one of whom was Mrs. Lloyd, mother of the great singer. Of this lady’s skill and loyalty Miss Beale always spoke with affectionate remembrance. The Lady Principal gained her support in a reform instituted very early in her reign, when separate piano lessons were again introduced, and the class system, disliked by Miss Beale on other than musical grounds, was swept away. She could not permit an arrangement which withdrew four pupils at once from the ordinary work of the school; through which important lessons were lost, and ‘collisions between class and music teachers made frequent.’ That the Council allowed such a change to be made is a testimony to their confidence in the new Principal. The immediate result was disastrous to the funds, and continued to be so until Mr. Brancker introduced his new financial scheme in 1860.

The founders of the College were not men to be content with knowledge obtained from epitomes; Miss[113] Procter, also, was earnest and devoted in her work, and took trouble to teach by means of lectures; but only dictated notes were given, and these were not corrected. Her lessons were evidently interesting:—

So wrote Mrs. Coulson (née Hartland) for Miss Beale’s History of the Ladies’ College, and another old pupil added:—

Greek history was a favourite subject with Miss Procter, who neglected for it the teaching of any other. Miss Beale, fresh from her Textbook, at once began English and general history with her young first class. Regardless of the additional labour it brought her, she also taught the children to take notes, which she corrected for them. She gave weekly examinations on the subjects studied, thus affording opportunity for English composition.

No science nor mathematics were taught in the early days. Miss Beale would have liked to introduce Euclid at once, but says, ‘Had I done so, I might have been the death of the College, so I had to wait for the tide. I[114] began my innovations with the introduction of scientific teaching, and under the name of physical geography I was able to teach a good deal. This subject was unobjectionable, as few boys learned geography.’

In one particular Miss Beale found the authorities of her new school striving to be abreast with the times. It was a rule of the constitution that the pupils should be examined annually, and each year a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge had undertaken the task. The first examiner (in 1853) was Mr. Nicolay, then Dean of Queen’s College, Harley Street. In the succeeding years a College master or some other local scholar conducted the examination and sent in a report to the Council.

The few specimens left of those early examination questions, even without the answers, mark a tide-line now interesting to trace.

At first the review of all knowledge was comprehended in twelve very simple questions, the most difficult mathematical calculation set before the first class being, ‘The Price of 3 ozs. of tea at 4s. 4d. per lb.’ The paper concluded thus:—

To the true teacher the interest of her work lies, beyond and above all subjects and methods, in the child. No tale, alas! nor letter remains to show what Miss Beale thought of her children when she first came among them. In one respect there must have been disappointment.[115] Miss Procter had opened a rival school, which had drawn off the elder pupils; consequently the first class consisted of girls of thirteen and fourteen. But fortunately there are some of those same children who can recall the first impression made upon themselves by the new Principal, as she appeared on August 19, 1858. Mrs. Mace, a daughter of the late Bishop Bromby, was among these. She writes:—

Small instances of the new Principal’s own powers of observation and use of outside facts stand out through the mists of time; for instance,

The incident suggests a laxer state of discipline than was ever known after. Assuredly on this point Miss Beale found a good deal to do. Some of the ‘young ladies’ treated the good-natured French master as their brothers at Cheltenham College might have done. There is a story, too, of a convenient cupboard at the end of the schoolroom, large enough for a quiet game or gossip, and of the consternation produced on a little knot of girls who thought they had assembled unobserved, when the door was quietly opened upon them by the Lady Principal herself.

In the matter of discipline, as of tuition, Miss Beale appears to have worked on lines already laid down. Perhaps she kept before her mind counsel which she later gave to a pupil who left Cheltenham to be head of a Foundation School: ‘Remember the school belongs to the governors, not to you.’ But we are equally certain that she would not have worked on any lines which she did not approve. She found no system of rules and penalties. She did not wish to introduce one; but she made real and abiding, in a manner hardly credited by those outside, the rule introduced by Miss Procter, by which no pupil might speak to another without leave. With regard to this rule, which at once taught self-control and produced order, the ‘quietness which minimises irritability,’ it may be further remarked that in a place and time of ‘exclusive’ views, the College could hardly have existed without it. The rule, kept, in itself[117] prevented any pupil from making friends for the first time in College; at any rate, it enabled her not to do so. There was, however, when Miss Beale first came, a good deal of speaking without leave. This disobedience with other irregularities she gradually overcame, not by an overawing personality alone, but with the ‘quiet’ ways and the word in season of which more than one old pupil speaks.

Tracing in sequence the history of Miss Beale’s first two years, when the College, though in the eyes of the world slowly perishing, was really sinking strong foundations, the Report of 1859 stands out with its commendation of the new Lady Principal. ‘Of Miss Beale herself it may suffice to remark, that to varied and extensive knowledge in all branches of Education, and skill in imparting it, she unites a manner and disposition which at once command the respect and win the affection of her Pupils, and renders it pleasant to your Council to maintain that frequent personal communication with her which is greatly conducive to the wellbeing of the Institution.’ Beyond this there is little definite to record, save the steady half-yearly diminution in the number of pupils and of the balance at the bank, and the consequent retrenchments, implying fresh burden and effort for the small teaching staff.

In her History of the College, Miss Beale dismissed as with a smile the tale of her early struggles, when each quarter it seemed less likely that the school could live, till in the last half-year of 1859 there were only sixty-five pupils and but a few pounds in the bank. But she admitted that perhaps only a barrister sitting in his chambers, and waiting in vain for briefs, could sympathise with the anxiety of that time, when upon one or two pupils more or less depended the very existence of[118] the College. The story she tells of recalling pupils, sent from the door by a servant who said she was at dinner, shows her unwearying zeal: ‘I sent her to fetch them back, saying, I am never at dinner.’ No pupil was lost for want of watchfulness. None could give notice without her knowing the reason, and in many cases getting the notice recalled. The problem was to live on, working in a way the public had not learned to appreciate. Those were days when nervous strain was little known and scarcely feared. School hours were long; the time-table of the College then involved morning and afternoon school for most days in the week. To one who sought ever to instruct with freshness and zeal, and to take trouble to make her pupils think for themselves, the work of teaching twice a day through the long half-years would now be counted an undue effort and strain. In addition to this, Dorothea Beale took upon herself, as if it were her own personal need (and she made it so), the daily fretting anxiety of making the College pay. This she never really threw off, though in the last years of established success it became somewhat modified. The economic strain was relaxed when Mr. Brancker’s able hand was laid upon the finances; the labour of teaching was lightened when the hours were changed, and when with gradually improving fortunes more and better teachers were engaged. Doubtless she might have taken advantage of these improvements to give herself more ease of body and mind. But she cared for no reward, save the ‘wages of going on.’ Her eager, nobly ambitious nature responded but too quickly to the claims of the College, so with each step made certain, there was ever immediately before her another to be fought for and won. It were hardly possible to say too much in praise of the enthusiastic[119] self-sacrifice which made the College what it is; but some of the results of the early strife with fortune were to be deplored. It left her too conscious of the place of the institution in the public eye; it made it hard for her to justify a more generous expenditure than was possible at first.

The improved discipline, the invigorating teaching, even the efforts of the new Principal herself, failed to attract pupils, and when in 1860 the lease of Cambray House expired, no one was willing to take the responsibility of renewing it.

Forty years later, when looking back on that time of gloom, Miss Beale wrote: ‘How often I was full of discouragement. It was not so much the want of money as the want of ideals which 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.

‘But helpers were sent with a faith and courage greater than mine.’

First among these was Mr. J. Houghton Brancker, who, already a member of the Council, became at the moment of deepest need, auditor of the accounts, and brought to the service of the College his great knowledge of business and enthusiastic interest in education. Mr. Brancker had come to live in Cheltenham for the sake of his daughters, in the year that Miss Beale became Principal. He was churchwarden to Mr. Bromby, whose liberal views he shared. Mr. Brancker had more than zeal and interest; he could think out a plan and pursue[120] it. He spared no effort or trouble where a good end was to be obtained. When he became financier of the College he gave it ‘a large share of his time, and as a paid secretary could not be afforded, he undertook all duties gratuitously.’ He made out a new scheme by which the ordinary fees were lowered, but music and drawing became extras. It was too great a venture to renew the lease of Cambray House; but the owner of the house consented to take the College on as a yearly tenant. The new scheme of payment helped at once to bring improvement, the number of pupils went up, and Mr. Brancker went so far as to order ‘seven new benches, three of them with backs.’

Mr. T. Houghton Brancker

This act of extravagance was followed almost immediately by an enlargement of the schoolroom, making it seventy feet long. Mr. Brancker proved that this additional space was really a financial economy; for with it all the pupils could be contained in one room, and the necessity of increasing the staff was deferred. As an alternative to the extension he breathed the suggestion, for the first time probably in the history of the College, of a new building, a building of its own, should a suitable site be obtained. In his letter on this subject to Mr. Hartland, the ‘young ladies’ for the first time appear as ‘children.’ Mr. Brancker’s dream was destined to be deferred for ten years; but was borne in mind by those whom it most concerned. It may be thought he was premature even in the enlargement, in spending at once the small profit made out of the increasing number of pupils. But he did not aim at making a fortune for the College. From the first it was proposed that the shareholders should reap no financial profit, and Mr. Brancker wished it to be evident that every penny was needed for the improvement of the work: hence, it was[121] no part of his plan to have a balance in hand. His effort was to keep up the prestige of the College in every way, and in order to do this he limited the number of shares issued to the actual number of pupils, in order that they might not be advertised for sale at a lower price than that at which they were purchased.

In three years from the time at which Mr. Brancker became auditor, he was able to write: ‘February 1863. We promised assets over £1000, they are £1076. We promised a money balance of over £200, and it is £356. So I think the shareholders may have confidence in their Chancellor of the Exchequer. We may well be proud of the result, but we are deeply indebted to Miss Beale’s exertions for it, and I am glad her remuneration (by capitation fees) is so much increased.’

By 1864 all pressing anxiety for the existence of the College was over. With its one hundred and thirty pupils it was practically full. A regularly constituted boarding-house was opened. Here the day-pupils, whose parents were leaving Cheltenham, could be taken, and thus another cause of diminution in the number of pupils was put an end to. Undivided attention and care could now be given to the work.

In February a change which greatly told on this was made, a change which now seems to have been only wise and reasonable, but which was at the time regarded as extraordinary and revolutionary. Longer morning hours were substituted for morning and afternoon school each day, Thursday afternoons being set apart for dancing and needlework. Possibly Miss Beale anticipated the outcry that would be raised; for she asked the mother of one of the pupils, one likely to be opposed to the change, to be with her at the Council meeting at which it was determined, ostensibly because she herself dreaded[122] the meeting, but doubtless in order that a representative of the parents might hear the subject fully discussed. No notice of the change was sent to the shareholders, parents and guardians received an intimation scarcely a week before it took place. Before that week was over, stormy articles appeared in the local papers, notices of removal were sent in, and a memorial from the shareholders and others caused Mr. Brancker hastily to summon another Council meeting, and to write to Mr. Hartland, ‘May I specially beg that you will attend ... as I consider the vital interests and the future prospects of the College are at stake.’ Mr. Brancker and Miss Beale recognised that now or never the battle must be won. Either the College authorities must rule, or the local papers and popular clamour.

The objections of the memorialists were that the change was a coup d’état; that four hours’ continuous study was too much for the children; that the governesses were idle in wanting a half-holiday every afternoon. But the real ground of dislike was doubtless that parents shirked the responsibility of looking after their children in the afternoons, and preferred schoolroom arrangements which would provide them with occupation during the whole day.

The Council replied in a circular to the parents that they would limit the experiment to a period of two months, after which they would act upon the opinion of the parents; and should the new plan be adopted, the quarter’s fees should be returned to those who wished to remove their children. The advantages of the change were then set forth.

It had been made to meet the objections raised to physical and mental effort following immediately upon a hurried meal; to the young ladies passing constantly[123] through the streets, to the trouble of sending servants, the exertion of so much walking, the time wasted in dressing and undressing, and to many others.

Medical men, among whom were Dr. Barlow and Dr. Gull,[39] were asked for their opinions; these were uniformly favourable to the change. The long morning hours were lightened by the introduction of calisthenics, drawing, and needlework, and it was arranged that certain teachers should attend the College every afternoon to supervise the preparation of lessons when the parents desired it. When a general meeting on the subject took place at the end of the specified two months, only eight voted for the old system. ‘It was found,’ says Miss Beale, ‘that more work was done in less time, for attention was closer ... teachers and children had been able to get some afternoon exercise.’

What was then thought so extraordinary has since become the order of the day for girls’ schools. In this matter Cheltenham led the way, a similar change was made by Miss Buss in 1865, and when the hours of the Girls’ Public Day School Company were arranged in 1873, it was on the plan of putting all regular studies into the morning hours.

At the end of Miss Beale’s first six years the College was in a much improved condition. There were ten classes, where she had found six. The notable changes on the staff, which was now larger, were that Miss Brewer had left to open a school for little boys in Brighton, and Miss Anna Beale and the Miss Eatons had joined. Increased prosperity, and above all an older first class, enabled Miss Beale to introduce some of the subjects which at first were thought to be too unacceptable to be safe. There was, of course, opposition from those who were[124] constantly repeating that ‘girls would be turned into boys by studying the same subjects.’ What, it was asked by some parents, do girls want with Euclid or advanced arithmetic? There were, however, a few who understood Miss Beale’s aims, and she was ever grateful for the support they gave her.

The method of annual examinations was gradually improved. When there was so little money available, local examiners, some of whom had no claim to the position, were chosen. Miss Beale records her conviction that a German examiner, who was at the time teaching in a local school, was a waiter from some hotel who had come to England out of the season. One English examiner recommended that history should be taught backwards. This was then regarded as an astounding proposition. Mr. Brancker fully sympathised with Miss Beale’s wish to improve the standard by obtaining examiners from one of the universities, and obtained permission from the Council to seek them himself in Oxford. The result was that for two or three years Mr. Sidney Owen undertook the principal part of the annual examination. His name was the first of a long list of men notable for scholarly achievement or educational progress, who in later years conducted these examinations at Cheltenham. In his first report Mr. Owen said much for the moral characteristics revealed by the intellectual work it was his business to survey. He concludes a very favourable judgment by saying he must not omit to mention that there were particular instances of remarkable excellence of which the College may justly be proud. Some of the papers he said, ‘would do credit to any Institution and gain high marks in any public examination.... May the College long give the lie to the miserable and pernicious fancy that accomplishments[125] ought to be the staple of a lady’s education, and that her reason is not designed by the Almighty to be highly cultivated.’ But he thought the papers too long. Mr. Owen was indeed the very first adventurer into that flood of response which examination questions cause to flow from uncontrolled feminine pens. Mr. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was in 1863 the first university examiner in arithmetic and mathematics.

This year was a fruitful one to Miss Beale for yet another reason. It was the year of the completion of her Chart. Always interested in history, ideally and practically, she had as early as the Queen’s College days adopted a French scheme by which the learning of dates was to be simple and easy, and the connections of history, the bearing of facts and events upon each other, were to be seen at a glance. She now perfected and brought it into use. The plan was based on the assumption that a fact is more readily grasped through the eye, than by the ear. By means of large squares, which were to represent centuries, enclosing smaller ones, which should denote years, the whole coloured in different shades according to the different ruling dominions and dynasties, a complete outline of the history of a country was to appear on one page. The reckoning was made by which ninety-nine was counted as the last year of a century, with the result that in the year 1900 the chart found itself somewhat discredited. But this method of counting, of course, in no way interfered with the system. In learning dates at the College, great stress was laid upon having a chart open before the student, so that she might grow familiar with its look, and become able to call up the knowledge of any special event by remembering the position of a dot in a certain square. There were those to say with Canon Francis Holland, founder of the[126] Church of England High Schools in London, ‘Why was I born before such aids were given to the understanding?’ Whether this system was indeed the royal road Miss Beale had planned for her pupils may well be questioned; but the Chart had at any rate the value of a simple vade mecum of chronology, introducing every girl at College to the minimum of facts she should know in the history of the world.

The Chart drew for its author a last kind word of recognition from an old friend, when Mr. Mackenzie wrote:—

So, in the best sense the College grew. Not in outward prosperity alone, in teaching power, in class rooms; but within. The invisible fabric of mind, and will, and heart, co-ordinated by one great idea, was slowly being raised. The ‘aborigines,’ as those who were girls of the Cambray House time call themselves, even insist that at no time of her career was Miss Beale’s personal influence so direct as then, when teaching so many subjects herself, and in small classes, she came personally in contact with nearly all the older pupils. All classes had their place and desks in the long hall; but the lowest division had a separate schoolroom as soon as funds justified it, and the rooms of the house, even on[127] occasion those appointed to the Principal, were used as classrooms. Miss Beale did not often teach in the large hall. The young ones were cleared out of their division room when she gave a big lecture; a small class, such as one for German translation, would be taken in her drawing-room. There came a moment when even her bedroom was invaded. Those small classes of mathematics or German were more especially the ones which endeared teacher and pupils to each other. There was always enough personal awe and inspiration about the Lady Principal to ensure a well-prepared lesson from really interested pupils, and often beyond the lesson there would be delightful talk. Iphigenie in Tauris recalls many thoughts beyond German translation, and the verbal exercise itself was deprived of every vestige of dulness by her great interest in the growth and development of words. No noble thought, no fine simile was allowed to pass unnoticed; other poems were compared, or perhaps a passage would be given to be translated into English verse. In the mere suggestion of this, what hope and encouragement lay for many who hardly liked to own their pleasure in such an attempt, or who had found earlier efforts of the kind thwarted by criticism too bracing for beginners! It may indeed be thought that Miss Beale had always an unwarranted admiration for the verse-making of her pupils. If in this she sometimes offended the cause of pure literature, her attitude towards it was yet surely the right one for a teacher.

This must indeed have been one of the happiest periods of her work, when she first came into near touch with the children she had seen grow up about her, and felt herself able to give impetus and training to growing aspirations and developing thought, when her sympathy[128] was constantly appealed to in the way in which she could best give it.

So writes one old pupil of that time. Another speaks of that deep tenderness which she ever felt, but often concealed, and was not afraid of showing in a case of special need.

It is sad to know that Miss Beale was often depressed in that hopeful spring-time of the College by the tongues of gossip and slander. She had so profound a horror of petty talk about other people’s business, that she possibly exaggerated the importance of carelessly repeated and untrue reports. She mentions the local gossip from which the College had to suffer.

Matters reached a climax when an absolutely untrue statement concerning cruelty to animals was set on foot about Mrs. Fraser, who had opened a boarding-house in connection with the College. The real gravity of the report lay in the circumstance that some in the College had listened to it, and it was necessary to address the teachers on the subject. It was a painful task, but bravely faced by the Lady Principal, who said:

Thus grasped, the nettle ceased to sting. It was perhaps a small incident scarcely worth noting. But Miss Beale remembered it as one which caused great discomfort at the time, and it had far-reaching consequences. Her power then was more limited than in after years. She learned through this difficulty the need for more liberty to act independently of the Council in the internal management of the College. In her efforts to get the evil rooted out from their midst, she nearly[130] exceeded her powers. This, doubtless, taught her to prosecute her reforms more warily. Above all, it may be believed that she gained a fresh access of that self-control so necessary to all governors. For it is only in fiction that difficulty can be overcome by a sudden word or action; in real life work has to be carried on despite the obstacle;—growth takes place under pressure.

Outside the work of the College there is not a great deal to relate about Miss Beale’s life at this period. Her holidays were sometimes spent in visits to her family.

After the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. John Beale, Hyde Court, the old family house came into the possession of Miss Beale’s mother, who had been left a widow in 1862. In 1868 Mrs. Beale came with two daughters to reside at Hyde Court until her death in 1881. There the Lady Principal often went in the holidays, finding pleasure in the beautiful surroundings. An old pupil tells of the delights of a visit to her there,—of Mrs. Beale, whom her daughter Dorothea greatly resembled, calm and majestic looking, of the glorious view from the windows of the room appropriated to Miss Beale and her large correspondence.

A good part of the holidays even then was spent in Cheltenham, but there were some visits abroad. One year Miss Beale accompanied her brother Edward, then recovering from illness, to the Black Forest. On another occasion she went with her sister to Chamounix, and enjoyed the mountain walks. In 1864 she spent some time at Zürich. More than once she went to Paris. This continental travel was by no means for recreation and refreshment only. It nearly always implied visits to schools, where fresh and foreign methods were studied. No opportunity of gaining new ideas was[131] ever neglected, for Miss Beale could not understand ever living apart from her work. In the holidays, as in school-time, she was still working, though in a different way. In Cheltenham itself there was little time or opportunity for recreation. Society, as the word is generally understood, had little to say to the new head-mistress, whose insignificant figure and plain dress did not provoke much interest. Her absence of small talk, her quiet intellectual face, her reputation as a clever woman, her connection with Queen’s College, all represented something unwonted and new. She had received no welcome from the religious world of Cheltenham, whose leaders, Mr. Close and Mr. Boyd, though one of them had accepted a seat on the Council, remained aloof from the interests of the Ladies’ College, perhaps sharing the prejudice still prevalent against any departure from the beaten track of women’s education.

It was of little moment to Miss Beale to find herself unsought by society, for she seldom cared to spend an evening from her work. She could not understand the position, which some have thought it wise to take up, that it is good for a school to have its head seen in society. She held it to be best for a school that its head should give herself unremittingly to her work,—disastrous to the welfare of any pupils for their teacher to sacrifice to social engagements the time she ought to give to the preparation of lessons. The friends of that early time were a few thoughtful people who were interested like herself in education.

On first coming to Cheltenham Miss Beale, to please Miss Brewer, she said, attended Christchurch, but she soon left this for St. Philip’s and St. James’ at Leckhampton, and for St. Paul’s. Both these churches were less obviously in the possession of wealthy seat-holders[132] than the churches in the town. To St. Philip’s she went at that time when she ‘wanted to be quiet,’ taking up a position near the door. All the middle of that church was then occupied by charity children and the poor, but there were in the rich part of the congregation many whose names have interest from one cause or another.

The incumbent of St. Philip’s, the Rev. A. E. Riddle, was a man of much learning. He had been Bampton Lecturer in 1832, and was the author of a well-known Latin Dictionary and other books. Miss Beale felt at home in his great library, and visits to Mrs. Riddle at Tudor Lodge were among the few recreations. Mr. Riddle died in 1859, and for the next few years she seems to have regularly attended St. Paul’s or Holy Trinity churches. She found real friends in the parsonage-house at St. Paul’s, but the immediate tie was soon broken, for in 1864 Mr. Bromby was made Bishop of Tasmania.

The claims of relationship and early friendship were not forgotten, but there was little time for letter-writing beyond the ever-growing correspondence connected with work. Mr. Beale wrote playfully of his daughter’s growing absorption:—

Thus, in difficulty and obscurity, the life-work of Dorothea Beale was begun. But hers was a light which could not long be hid. Each year it burned more surely and shone further afield. By 1864, when the Endowed Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted, she was known as a successful head-mistress whose views and methods were worth hearing. With Miss Buss and others she was asked to give evidence.

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CHAPTER VII
A ROYAL COMMISSION

This volume, which memorialises one great name in one field of women’s work, is not the place in which to dwell upon the details of that work in other departments. But it may be remarked in passing that the educational movement itself was but a part—an essential part—of a larger one. It seemed, Miss Beale often said in speaking of this time, that women, like the damsel of old, heard the Voice of the Master penetrating the slumber of death, bidding them Arise. And they obeyed. They arose in many and various ways to minister to Him.

The first sign of this awakening was publicly seen in 1844, when Dr. Pusey engaged several leading laymen, among whom was Mr. Gladstone, to help him in the foundation of an Anglican Sisterhood. Two or three Orders date from before the opening of Queen’s College in 1848; those at Clewer and Wantage followed soon[135] after. The devotion of Florence Nightingale and her little band in 1854 led many to follow her example, and the reform of nursing steadily if slowly followed. In 1866, before the reports of the Schools’ Inquiry were published, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell took an M.D. degree in Switzerland, and Miss Garrett began to study for one in London. The desire for better teaching and training was widespread. The establishment of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was a part of a larger movement which was affecting the whole country. Sixteen years had passed since the opening of Queen’s College had unsealed the fountain of knowledge for women. Immediately after, in 1849, a college had been established on undenominational lines. This was Bedford College, which found a liberal donor in Mr. Reid, and among its first teachers counted Francis Newman, De Morgan, and Dr. Carpenter. These led the way. Then in 1850 the great school which will for ever be associated with the name of Frances Mary Buss was opened in Camden Road, its enterprising head-mistress having there removed the private school she had carried on successfully for some years, to develop it on the lines of a public school, under the enlightened supervision of Mr. Laing. Cheltenham followed four years later, and these two, for many years the only public schools for girls in the country, may be considered the direct offspring of Queen’s College.

The general condition of girls’ education remained unimproved some years longer. Yet amid the thousands of private schools where worthless or poor teaching prevailed, there were a few which had come into the hands of capable women who had been inspired by the noble ideals of those who led the religious and intellectual thought of the day. The name of Elizabeth Sewell is representative of these; but for the most part they[136] lived and died unknown, because their work was of less public moment than that of the great leaders. Yet, in an account of women’s education it seems ungracious to name only the well known, however great, and to pass unnoticed the wise virgins, less prominent but not less faithful, whose lamps shone and were replenished through the night. In her death, as in her work on earth, Dorothea Beale was not alone. Miss Sewell, aged ninety, passed but a few weeks before her, and very shortly after two other unknown fellow-workers, who had not laboured in vain. The Times of January 1907 told of Miss Piper, the founder and head of Laleham. Of Miss Piper it could be said, that at a time when the instruction given to girls was of a formal character, ‘she set herself to make her pupils think, to stimulate interest, to enforce thoroughness.’ These were the very points on which the Schools’ Commission found girls’ education defective. A fortnight later died Emily Milner, who was for fifty years head of St. Mary’s School at Brighton, to which she devoted all her small income. She taught with marvellous energy and freshness, inspiring her pupils themselves to be zealous and persevering, and keeping them in touch with all that was best in the rapid advance and change of modern education. But such head-mistresses were rare. The Commissioners seldom found either thoroughness or freshness in the schools they inspected.

The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted in 1864, a year in which John Ruskin, in a lecture at Manchester, made a passionate appeal to rich women to claim their right to serve—and reign. His cry did not reach a larger public until, eight years later, the lecture was published under the title ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ in Sesame and Lilies. Like the simultaneous discovery[137] of some great star, by watchers strange to one another and half a continent apart, the movement for enlarging the scope of women’s work was furthered by men of divers ways and methods, heralded by visionaries like Tennyson and Ruskin, marshalled into deliberate order by high-hearted officials like the Secretary of the Governesses’ Benevolent Society and the School Inspector Joshua Fitch. Possibly no Assistant Commissioner, as he drew up his report, recalled the ringing words of Ruskin. But though the medium varies to the stretch of difference between the inspiration of a great poem and the deliberate statements of a blue-book, we recognise the same force behind both, and see both alike to be channels for one great stream of tendency. The conclusions drawn from the report, the resulting effects seen in new schools and organised public examinations, miss nothing of their special value if regarded in connection with such words as these:—

The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted to examine into the existing state of education above the elementary grade, and to report on measures needed for its improvement, having special regard to all endowments applicable, or which could rightly be made applicable, thereto. By the instance of Miss Emily Davies,[138] girls’ schools were included in the inquiry. Among the Commissioners was Lord Lyttelton, who was regarded by those who wished to improve women’s education as a friend to girls. He had manfully asserted their right to a share of the endowments, and of women to a share in the management of girls’ schools. Sir Stafford Northcote, Dr. Temple, and Mr. Forster were also members of the Commission. Among the Assistant Commissioners, whose business it was to visit and report upon schools, were such well-known names as those of T. H. Green, J. G. Fitch, and J. Bryce.

No schools outside the eight selected districts were visited, but the Principals of some beyond their limit were requested to give evidence before the Commissioners in London. In the year 1868-9 reports and evidence were gradually issued in a series of twenty large blue-books. Of these volumes about nineteen-twentieths related to the education of boys and general questions, and about one-twentieth to the education of girls alone.

Miss Beale hailed the Commission as a means of bringing the thousand inefficiencies of girls’ education to the light. She took advantage of it in an address she gave in 1865 at Bristol, at a meeting of that now extinct body, the Social Science Congress, when she pleaded that, for boys and girls alike, education should be planned with the view of developing character. Her argument was none the less weighty because so carefully guarded:—

These words were pioneers of the Commissioners’ reports, in which they find a literal echo. The reports, with her own evidence and that of other ladies interested in education, were by Miss Beale preserved for posterity. She perceived instinctively that if they were not brought into general circulation all would soon be forgotten, much never known at all. With that stern sense of economy which caused her never to waste an opportunity or a scrap of material, she took the task upon herself. She obtained permission to republish the matter relating to girls’ schools in a single volume, for which she wrote a preface. In this she dealt with the evidence of the Commissioners, discussing at some length the questions of examinations and overwork. But she sought chiefly, as she had already done a few years before in an article in Fraser’s Magazine,[41] to show the[140] need of real study for women, the advantage to be gained for character and mind from such subjects as history and literature.

The general report of the Commissioners on Girls’ Education forms the first chapter of Miss Beale’s blue-book. It opened with a quotation to the effect that an educated mother is of even more importance than an educated father. Miss Beale may have thought this an exaggerated statement; but she must have welcomed and republished it with some satisfaction. She was for ever having it dinned into her ears, by those who opposed all serious study for their daughters, that girls should be educated to be wives and mothers. Mrs. Grey showed the real fallacy of the statement, in a paper which was the direct result of the republished reports, when she pointed out that girls were not being educated to be wives, but to get husbands. A happy marriage Mrs. Grey held to be ‘the summum bonum of a woman’s life ... not an object to be striven for, but to be received as the supreme grace of fate when the right time and the right person come.’[42] With Miss Beale and Miss Emily Davies she deprecated the education which is designed from the first to fit and prepare for a special position in life. She would have women and men alike, working men, tradesmen, men of fortune educated as human beings, not technically instructed for some special walk in life. In eloquent words she pictured the ideal for which she and others like-minded were striving, and were seeking to attain by the practical method of enlightening public opinion, founding schools, asking for public examinations. She wrote:—

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Mrs. Grey’s conclusions were the same as those of the Commissioners, who complained that there was no demand for the education of girls, the cause of the indifference being that low idea which regards only the money value of education, and estimates it solely as a means of getting on. Girls were taught with a view to increasing their attractiveness before marriage, rather than with that of increasing their happiness and usefulness after. This was the general cause of dissatisfaction, but there were many details.

One and all complained that, with the exception of quite a few schools, the education of girls in the middle classes was much worse than that existing in the elementary schools of the day. This was of course specially the case in subjects like arithmetic, and arose greatly from the mistaken notion that they were of no use to girls. The Commissioners were unanimous in condemning the prevailing method of instruction by means of such books as Mangnall’s Questions and the like, termed by Mr. Bryce ‘the noxious brood of catechisms.’ Of this, be it said, Miss Mangnall’s famous work, which bears witness to its author’s well-stored mind, and which reached nearly a hundred editions, was the best. The ‘Questions’ demanded indeed the knowledge of such useless facts as the number of houses burned in the Great Fire of London; but there were in use, in the numerous small private schools of the period, cheaper and more stupid books, in which the information was[142] not merely useless, but even defied common sense. A small catechism on ‘Science,’ entitled ‘Why and Because,’ concluded a long list of inept questions with: ‘Why do pensioners and aged cottagers put their teapots on the hob to draw?’ In some books, facts of varying nature—of history, geography, grammar, etc.—were all jumbled together. It is not surprising that girls instructed by the parrot-like, inconsequent methods of such lesson-books, passed from school with no love of reading.

The Commissioners complained further, that though French and music were held to be the most important subjects to which a girl should devote herself, they were nearly always very badly taught. They spoke of time wasted at the piano; they calculated the thousands of hours given to music which was not worth hearing at the last. They gave instances of ludicrous mistakes in French, which no effort of visiting masters could improve into anything like a real knowledge of the language, because rudimentary grammar had never been mastered. They spoke of drawing taught with an equal disregard of thoroughness, and with still more disastrous result. ‘The common practice of masters touching up their pupils’ performances for exhibition at home fosters a habit of dishonesty, and that too prevalent tendency running through the whole of female education, the tendency to care more for appearance than reality, to seem rather than to be.’[43]

Some spoke of the absence of healthy interests, of the need for games, a need which appealed but little to Miss Beale, in whose own youth play was marked by its absence only. Many urged the necessity for founding in every town public schools similar to boys’ grammar[143] schools, where girls could obtain a sound education, without accomplishments, at a low cost.

These reports embody a number of facts concerning a state of things now happily passed away. Hundreds of small private schools might have read their doom in them, for the establishment of many public schools, endowed and otherwise, soon followed the inquiry. We see the poor sham education, with its wrong notions of the beautiful and the best, vanish without a regret. Yet, since all human effort has its worth and place, is it possible and fair to say one word above its grave? Was there no genuine wish to give pleasure pleading in the miserable pieces of the boarding-school young lady, and even in the painful drawings which the master’s touch failed to make tolerable? They testify at least to something out of the work-a-day sphere, to the desire for the ‘something afar,’ often the first step to a truer vision. Precious years of girlhood spent on the vain effort to attain accomplishments speak of some dim perception of the refinement and uplifting which men look for in women. Ill-devised, badly attempted, poorly carried out, the thought of giving delight was not only mercenary in aim; behind it was some consciousness of a real human need. The educators of women to-day should know better than to despise its pleading, however imperfectly expressed. ‘May I not have one ornamental one?’ said a brother when a third sister was about to devote herself to obtaining certificates for mathematics.

Nine ladies, including Miss Emily Davies, Miss Buss, and Miss Beale, were asked to give evidence before the Commission. Miss Beale’s, which was taken in 1865, is of double interest, at once touching the state of girls’ education in general, and the advance being made in the[144] Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. She took with her a hundred entrance examination papers arranged in order for inspection. Actuated perhaps by the marvellous carefulness which lost nothing, and seeing a use even in what would often be considered waste papers, as well as by the definite aim of preserving a record of progress, she had kept all the answers written by her pupils to entrance examination questions. With the College papers, she showed also some written by children in one of the national schools at Cheltenham, in order that the Commissioners might make a comparison for themselves.

On being questioned, Miss Beale explained in detail the whole system of the College, interesting the Commissioners in the method of teaching Euclid, one which at some points antedated by many years the present teaching of geometry in the public schools, and which has lately been adopted by the universities. At a time when schoolboys were learning Euclid by heart, Miss Beale was teaching it to girls by a method of explanation which they had to follow and finally reproduce without any learning by rote.

With regard to the teaching of Holy Scripture she said, ‘Each class teacher takes her own class, and that, I think, very important’; but on this subject little was said.

On the question of discipline and moral difficulties she explained that the government of the College was chiefly by personal influence, and that her plan was to make use of very simple means, such as changing the seat of a child who was suspected of being dishonest in her work. ‘It is a small thing, but it indicates want of trust, and it is by small things we govern.’ Such discipline obviously appeared slight to Dr. Storrar, who asked on hearing it,[145] ‘Perhaps girls are more sensitive than boys in such matters?’ ‘I will not attempt to decide,’ replied Miss Beale, ‘but my opinion is that they are not.’

Asked her opinion on a system of examination, Miss Beale recommended a general Board for the examination of teachers, to be founded with national sanction, and an inspection of the schools under the management of those who had passed the examination. ‘There is one other point,’ she added: ‘the cause might be helped on by the establishment of a model school for the training of teachers; I hardly know how such would work.’

The evidence of the Commission, published in 1868, produced a great impression on Mrs. William Grey and her sister, Miss Shireff. Under their able leadership there was formed, in 1871, ‘The National Union for Improving the Education of Women,’ for the purpose of organising effort and helping to create a sounder public opinion with regard to education itself. The work of this society led two years later to the foundation of the Girls’ Public Day-School Company. By this agency, which was commercial as well as educational, High Schools were established in most of the important towns of England. There followed the numerous independent efforts and companies which have covered the country with a network of secondary schools for girls. In 1872, Miss Buss giving up her private property in her very successful school, by an act of self-sacrifice and generosity made it a public school by placing it in trust. A lower school was also established in Camden Town under the same management.

Miss Emily Davies also found her work aided by the Commission. She was largely instrumental in the opening of Local Examinations to girls. The foundation of the first women’s college at a university was laid by her[146] when, in 1873, the college she had opened at Hitchin four years earlier was removed to Cambridge, where it became known as Girton. This step was perhaps even less of a venture, though more startling to the public mind, than the first beginning at Hitchin. Of this Miss Maria Hackett had written to Miss Beale:—

Public examinations for girls necessarily followed the work of the Commission, the opening of women’s colleges, and the establishment of public schools for girls. Head-mistresses were called upon to face all the difficulties and drawbacks of these, as well as to accept their advantages, and in some cases also to incur odium, as they worked with measures which they knew to be not in themselves the best, but only the best attainable. Miss Beale had her own vision of what a public examination for girls should be. She had said at Bristol in 1865 that parents

She had also said:—

The formal admission of girls to the Cambridge Local Examinations took place in 1865, though they had been informally accepted as candidates as early as 1863. Miss Beale did not accept the examination at Cheltenham, mainly because its arrangements did not fall in with those of the College year; but she closely observed its working, noted each set of questions and reports, recognising that with these examinations new impetus had been given to the progress of education. She wrote and spoke on the subject, holding it to be the duty of the teacher to seek to guide this movement, which must increasingly affect girls’ schools.

The following extract from one of her papers is chosen because of its bearing on the larger and still unanswered question of university degrees:—

After some years of consideration a decision was practically forced upon Miss Beale. She must choose for her clever girls either to pass a public examination which she thought more suited for men, or to fall behind in a path which was surely leading in the right direction. She did not hesitate, but saw that on this, as on many occasions, it must be her part to labour to remove obstructions, to overcome obstacles.

In her interview with the Commissioners, on being asked if she would approve of the establishment of a special examination for ladies up to the standard of attainment of the London matriculation, she had replied, ‘Certainly,’ but advocated that it should be made possible for women to take German instead of Greek. This examination, she agreed, might be taken as a measure, though the measure might not be filled with the same subjects as for men. She was soon called upon to act in this matter, for in 1869 it was opened to women, and the University of Cambridge also instituted an examination for women over eighteen years of age.

Miss Beale accepted both for the College, but for some years there was no regular organisation of work for those who were taking the Cambridge examination. This was partly due to the higher limit of age. It was[149] then thought extraordinary that girls should stay at school after they were eighteen. It was difficult to persuade many to do so. Some were ‘wanted at home,’ some wished to ‘come out’; those who were intending to be teachers thought they should be already earning. Then the absorbing work for the London examination made it difficult to arrange for much of a wholly different character. Consequently, at first, the older pupils and the young teachers who sought to pass the Cambridge examination had to look after themselves a good deal. Miss Beale would certainly not consider this a drawback. They had the additional advantage of lectures from herself on literature and history.

The ‘London’ must have seemed better worth while for many reasons. It might prove a first step to a definite degree. The degree examinations were not opened till ten years later, and might not have followed at all had zeal and courage not been shown by women over the matriculation. Again, the matriculation certificate enabled men to offer themselves as candidates for further examination with a view to certain careers, such as the medical profession. This would hold good for women. For it had the real advantage of being a recognised standard, while a certificate for an examination arranged specially for women would be like ‘foreign coin.’

One cannot too much admire the qualities which bore teacher and pupils up that steep initial step of the London examination; for steep it was. At that time it demanded a certain knowledge of subjects which were generally regarded as the prerogative of men. Hardly any of the girls who hoped to pass in them had, when they began their special preparation six terms before the examination, learned any Latin, chemistry, geometry, algebra, or natural philosophy—this last being a term which[150] embraced some acquaintance with optics, statics, dynamics, and hydrostatics. Little more than the rudiments of these new subjects had to be mastered, for the examination at that time required ‘a collection of minima, a smattering of everything, enforced with Procrustean rigour on Philistine lines.’ Primarily designed for boys with a grammar-school education, the Latin paper included some knowledge of Horace. It is scarcely necessary to say that disappointment as well as hope was woven into the strand of these brave beginnings. Many failed. Some who were not really equal to the work were persuaded to enter. Some who passed, complained that they could not retain knowledge which had been acquired too rapidly and not assimilated. Not avowedly, not ever consciously to herself—her sense of responsibility for the individual was too great for that, and she reckoned the training of value even if there were no success at the end—but in actual fact, the failures were accepted by Dorothea Beale as a necessary complement of victory to be.

All the weakness of the position was known to her. And she showed not only courage and daring, but patience and humility still harder to practise. On one occasion, after a specially difficult Latin paper, which had proved too much for many examinees, she wrote to another head-mistress whose disappointment was as keen as her own:—

This conclusion showed special insight, willingness to bear, and readiness to learn; for the Latin paper was a far more real test of knowledge than any of the others. To have complained of it might have been to acknowledge inferiority which did not seek improvement. And looking back, it may be seen that the failures and mistakes were not of much moment. The real importance and the real triumph lay with the aim and effort. Miss Beale early foresaw what has been literally fulfilled.

‘It is clear,’ she said, ‘that it will before long be impossible in England, as it is now on the Continent, for any one to obtain employment as a teacher without some such attestation,’ i.e. as a certificate. If she could help it, Miss Beale would not let girls who were intending to teach, pass from her without one; she persuaded the pupil,[152] she reasoned with the parent, she frequently mastered both; she silently bore contradiction and misconception. She refused to be thwarted by any obstacle, much as she might wish to change it—such as the time of year at which it was held, the difficulty of sending candidates to London, or by any hesitation on her own part. She might write to a newspaper, ‘it is to some extent an open question what education is most suitable for girls,’ but she inspired her class to prepare for ‘the London’ with zealous drudgery and in the power of self-denial, as the best they could do to fit themselves for work.

Yet the College list of successes was from the first good. In 1869, the first year of examination, eight in all England went in for the matriculation examination, and six failed. The only candidate from Cheltenham passed. This was Miss Susan Wood. In the next year, of the three who passed from Cheltenham one was the famous Greek scholar, Miss Jane Harrison, another bore the name—so dear to its generation—of Marian Belcher.

There was plenty of criticism. There were many to repeat the old complaint that women were being unfitted for their proper duties. It was Miss Beale’s delight to show that those who did well in examinations could also excel in domestic duties. She would tell how one successful candidate of the London examination proved first a helpful sister, then a devoted wife and mother. She would show with pride a letter she received from one of whose ability and success she had great reason to be proud, signed ‘Yours in flour and dripping.’

It may be mentioned here that there is a home distinction connected with the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. In 1868 it was resolved at an annual general meeting that pupils who reached a certain specified standard in the College examinations, and whose general conduct[153] was approved, should be entitled to receive certificates. The first certificates under this resolution were awarded in 1869 to four pupils. In 1875 it was resolved at a Council meeting that those who obtained the College certificate should be entitled Associates of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. These associates are, with the consent of the Lady Principal, allowed to attend any ordinary classes of the College without the payment of fees.

Following hard upon the introduction of public examinations for girls came the cry of overwork. There was some reason in it; but it was much, very much due to timidity and want of knowledge, as well as to exaggeration. It is not necessary to repeat here the evidence which Miss Beale began to collect even before she was a teacher herself, and to which she was ever adding, to the effect that idleness and ennui have more and sadder victims than even misdirected energy and overwork. A healthy prejudice against an empty, self-centred life is steadily growing. The movement which its followers have named Christian Science—also that which is preferably called Faith Healing—daily bring to light instances of self-destruction caused by the slothful mind and unruled will. None the less, the cry of overwork was not an empty one. When first girls began to work for examinations, it was not known how much or how little they could do. Miss Beale’s own opinions upon this, as put before the Commission, were quite tentative. Clever teachers did not always allow for slower-moving brains than their own. Nor was the difference of temperament sufficiently observed and considered. The eager and artistic mind would feel strain and fatigue where one less delicately balanced might toil unwearied. It was not recognised how willing girls are to be pressed, how eager they are[154] to please, how unreasonable they often are in their own arrangements for work, or how easy it is for them to fall into the insincerity of making protracted hours of reading take the place of concentrated mental effort. Head-mistresses and others who had mastered difficulties alone, and who still carefully prepared every lesson they gave, in spite of the pressure of daily affairs, had to learn to reckon with these drawbacks. Examinations when first introduced must from their very novelty have been a great anxiety to both teachers and pupils. The best way of working for them and of resting before them had to be discovered by experience. The pressure was less obvious with those actually first in the field, as they would naturally be all of good ability. The danger began when girls of smaller brain-power and equal ambition, but ignorant of their limitations, dared to follow.

Complaints of overwork came often from homes where there was little cultivation or regard for the things of the mind. Girls who could produce, in what they called their ‘notes of lectures,’ statements concerning ‘heroic cutlets’[44] and ‘Lincoln’s hotel’[45] had not, it may be well understood, much intellectual background. Yet the wholly unfounded complaints of the parents of such pupils would receive public attention that was little deserved. There were others, whose parents would have had them play a pretty part in home life in the afternoon and evening, but who naturally did not find enough time for lessons unless they sat up late or slurred them over. As it was never Miss Beale’s intention that day-pupils should consider themselves to be anything but ‘in the schoolroom,’ the home work was not arranged to allow time for more than the necessary walk or recreation.

The question of overwork is one that still agitates[155] the scholastic world. The real difficulty, at Cheltenham as elsewhere, is not with the schoolgirl whose life is under supervision, but with the young teachers and the elder pupils who have the management of their own time and health, and have not yet learned their own limitations, or acquired a due measure of self-control.

During the early period of the history of the College, Miss Beale came in contact with minds and ideas outside her own school, chiefly by means of the Schools’ Inquiry Commission, and the matter of public examinations. Those who wished had the opportunity of learning her views through her magazine articles and the pamphlets which she began at this time to publish. The most notable of these was ‘The Address to Parents.’ Much of this valuable little paper—one which in her early years as head-mistress made Miss Beale’s ideas widely known among those who cared for real education—had been anticipated in her address to the Social Science Congress in 1865. Then she pleaded the cause of day-schools, urging for them that they offered a training which did not separate children from the influence of home.

In 1869, in another address to the same Society, Miss Beale unfolded for the first time her ideas of the help[156] which should be given to girls who were in need of education they could not afford, more especially to those who wished to prepare for a life of teaching. ‘I propose,’ she said, ‘the foundation of a new Benevolent Society, which shall be distinguished from other societies by its rigid adherence to the principle of giving nothing away.’ Instead of gifts, she suggested yearly loans of money, for the use of which an exact account and report of work done should be rendered. This Society has never been founded, but the work Dorothea Beale wished it should do was carried on by herself, quietly and thriftily, but with ever-widening operations, to the day of her death.

At one other point did Miss Beale at this period touch opinion outside her own sphere. This was by writing for the Kensington Society,—a little semi-educational association which during its short life included many names of women who were in their day leaders in philanthropic work and thought. The topics on which its members wrote or deliberated were such as these:—

Meanwhile the general work of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, was going on quietly and steadily, developing in every best way. The valuable time of the Principal was no longer taken up with the superintendence[157] of lessons and chaperoning music pupils. A larger and gradually improving staff enabled her to arrange her own work so that it might be of the greatest service to the College. But her increasing interest in education at large, her ever-growing sense of having a special place in a large movement, were never allowed to distract her mind from the work of the hour. Rather, she used them as an inspiration for daily drudgery.

The preparation of lessons, the minute and careful correction of notes of lectures,—monotonous work which demands a continuous strain of attention, went on week by week. By means of this quiet, diligent toil she and her fellow-workers were building the real College, of which the fine structure whose first edition was opened in 1873 is but a sign and a symbol.

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CHAPTER VIII
ORGANISATION

In these words the Lady Principal addressed her staff, pupils, and a small sprinkling of friends on the first morning of assembling in the new building which, begun in January of previous year, was thus opened on March 17, 1873. As the school hours ended on Saturday the 15th, a simple order had been given to take home all the books, and to bring them to the new College at the usual time on Monday. In the course of the afternoon all desks and portable fittings were moved and arranged in order for work. The appointment of places in the new hall was, so far as can be remembered, a matter of a few minutes only, so quiet and free from fuss was all College organisation. There was certainly not half an hour of the ordinary lesson time lost. Yet it was a change which made an undying impression. The quietness with which it came was wholly in accordance with the spirit of the school. The regular work, undisturbed even for an hour by the totally new surroundings, spoke emphatically of the response of duty to every fresh inspiration and larger freedom.

And how beautiful those new surroundings seemed to the hundred and fifty girls who were privileged to experience the change from the square, unadorned rooms[160] of Cambray House. Two churches at that time, one with its high, fine spire, another with its lavish decoration, were all that the town could show of the Gothic Renaissance which followed the teachings of Ruskin and Morris. The Ladies’ College was early among non-ecclesiastical buildings of this type. To some it may have seemed florid, but not to the eyes of youth and hope, which took delight in the pierced and patterned stone, the flowers in the coloured glass, the arch of the windows, the unusual design of the lecture-rooms. These caused teachers and pupils to ignore for the most part the undoubted chilliness of the new rooms, and the ‘currents of air,’ about which some parents wrote complaining letters, for at that time people were even more afraid of draughts than they are to-day. It is worth mentioning, as characteristic of Miss Beale’s mind, that she forgot very soon the exact date of entrance into the new College; though when reminded of it each year by her own birthday, or by the approach of spring and Lady Day, she would on some suitable March morning say a few words at prayers: ‘It is —— years to-day since we entered,’ etc.

In 1873 the building was but begun. It is a question if Miss Beale herself dreamed of all that was to follow. There was as yet no house for the Lady Principal, and for a year, while it was being built, she lived with Mrs. Fraser, who had one of the three boarding-houses then existing. The house completed in 1874, there followed in 1875 the first enlargement of the College, the two hundred and twenty pupils for whom it was first designed having rapidly become three hundred. At this time a second large hall and more classrooms were added. In seven years the College had doubled its numbers; hence in 1882 were built the art and music wings and the[161] kindergarten rooms, to be followed almost immediately by science rooms and laboratories. After this the sound of the hammer was not heard for nearly four years; but it is one which has a resounding echo in the memories of College life. There were a few peaceful half-hours when it was stopped for Scripture lessons, at all other times it was but a too persistent reminder of prosperity and growth. A memory also abides of crowded doorways and passages, overfull lecture-rooms, and a continual looking forward to the increased accommodation which each new enlargement would give.

This constant expansion as funds permitted was entirely after Miss Beale’s heart. In 1891 she wrote to Miss Arnold:—

Strange as it may appear, the building of a fit home for the College had not taken place without opposition. Miss Beale relates in her History that after the site for it had been purchased, the annual general meeting of proprietors in 1871 voted by a majority interested in the Cambray property that it should be re-sold. Dr. Jex-Blake, the Principal of the Cheltenham College, and a member of the Ladies’ College Council, came to the rescue, and in a special meeting of the same year spoke earnestly in support of the plan for building. ‘Teachers so able and energetic and successful 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[162] 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. It is quite right to say, “Let well alone,” but that does not involve letting ill alone. The College has achieved brilliant success, but that was not due to its having been cramped for room; and when no longer cramped, its success will be greater.’ The resolution of the earlier meeting was rescinded by fifty-nine votes to nine, and two months later a contract was accepted for building from Mr. John Middleton’s design. The site, for which £800 was given, was a part of the old Well Walk where, between their glasses, George the Third and other famous water-drinkers had once taken their daily constitutional.

In the matter of the building, Miss Beale had a struggle to get her bold and comprehensive ideas carried out, but eventually she won the day. It was hard for her, at the very moment when she seemed about to realise her dreams for the expansion of the work of the College, to receive orders which she felt to be new limitations. She had constantly to explain her reasons and requirements to those who had a deep interest in the welfare of the school, but who had not also the knowledge needed for arrangements which Miss Beale felt and intended should be in the hands of the Principal alone. The following letter which she wrote to a member of the Council suggests some of her difficulties, and also her method of skilfully and apparently accidentally stating the inconvenience or disaster which would ensue if another arrangement than her own were adopted:—

The new building was not the only cause of difference. The Lady Principal, with her advanced ideas on women’s examinations, her desire to help teachers, to increase the number of the pupils, seemed to some members of the Council to be pushing the work into other fields than those for which it was intended when first the Proprietary College for Ladies was founded. ‘Local interest,’ a term not ominous of good in the ears of great educators, demanded a good day-school for the daughters of gentlemen, and nothing more. Some felt that, in the pursuit of mathematical and scientific attainments for which special teachers and classrooms were[164] required, accomplishments such as drawing and painting would be neglected. Some, who had watched the growth of the infant College, and looked upon it almost as their own, interfered in small ways, as in the arrangements of seats and rooms. The gossip mentioned already was at its height during the first year in the new College, and Miss Beale thought that it might have been prevented or much minimised had all connected followed her counsel of perfection by being superior to town talk.

More than all she felt the need of a larger outlook. The Council should in her view include some members whose personal acquaintance with the College and the needs of the town would give them a special interest in it; but she desired to unite with these men and women of intellectual power and large views whose experience would rank them among educationists. And for the management of the boarding-houses, which were now becoming each year a more important element in the College life, opinion which could be untouched by local prejudices was needed.

Some of the anxieties of this time were expressed by Miss Beale in a paper which she may have thought of reading to the Council. It began thus:—

There were perhaps others who cared for the College, who realised no less strongly than Miss Beale the advantage it would be to bring on to the Council those who were less interested in it as a local institution than as one of educational value for the country at large, but it was she who undoubtedly took the lead in the steps made to this end. In this she showed courage, for even those members of the Council who best understood her views hesitated to support them, fearing an abrupt change which would do more harm than good. They wrote to caution her:—

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Differences of this kind pointed to a change of administration. As early as 1865, in her address at Bristol, Miss Beale had pointed out the difficulties besetting a school organised on the lines of Cheltenham:—

Union for the general good—a single purpose in Principal, Council, shareholders alike—this alone could prevent all serious and hindering differences of opinion among them. It was for this union Miss Beale was specially striving now. Her paper to the Council went on thus:—

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There is also an interesting letter to Mr. Verrall on the subject of her authority:—

Many members of the College Council desired change and enlargement. One wrote: ‘I cannot think it right to leave Miss Beale or any other Lady Principal to the mercies of a purely local Council ... for I think with such a Council no good Lady Principal could long agree.’

Among those whom Miss Beale consulted at this crisis, and from whom she received sympathy, were Dr. Jex-Blake, then head-master of Rugby, and Sir Joshua Fitch, who later on became a member of the Council.

The desired reform was brought about in 1875, when at a general meeting in March the relative powers of the proprietors, Council, and Principal were more clearly[168] defined and the number of the governing body increased. The Council then elected consisted of the following:—

Much was gained by this remodelling, but the period of uneasy development was not yet over. One annual meeting which discussed the constitution of the College appears in private notes made by the Principal for her History as ‘Bear Garden.’ Reorganisation was seen to be essential. The College, founded in 1853 as a voluntary[169] association, had by 1880 grown far beyond the calculations of its founders. Besides the school buildings and the Lady Principal’s house, it possessed Fauconberg House and the sanatorium at Leckhampton. To give it a safe legal foundation it was therefore registered ‘with limited liability’ under the Companies’ Acts of 1862 and 1867, without the addition of the word ‘limited’ to its name. New regulations concerning the holding of shares and property—the appointment of officers—were also made.

Miss Beale did not often speak of the difficulties which necessarily she had to meet, as one called upon to direct the development of a great institution. But she had counsel and sympathy for those who were similarly placed. Miss Buss wrote thus to Miss Ridley of help she obtained from her:—

The first efforts of the new Council to grapple with their task revealed that one source of difficulty lay in the government of the boarding-houses. The early founders had foreseen this when, in their first prospectus, they announced that they would not be responsible for any houses. Experience, however, soon showed that by this policy, grave dangers were at the same time incurred. Into Miss Beale’s early struggle for pupils the question of boarding-houses scarcely entered, though for the want of them she often had sadly to witness the loss of good pupils to the College. There were among the day-pupils many children of Anglo-Indians in England for a time. On the return of these parents to India, they were forced to make boarding arrangements for the children left behind. It was not till 1864 that the first regularly constituted boarding-house was opened under Miss Caines. This was at 24 Lansdown Place, now joined to No. 25, and known as St. Helen’s. In 1870 Miss Caines removed to Fauconberg House, the first property purchased by the College.

It was only through actual experience that the position of the boarding-house and its head could be defined. In point of fact, this situation had to grow and develop according to the requirements of the College, which as formerly had to constitute precedents and make experiments. It is but seldom that the details of any great[171] scheme can be arranged beforehand with deliberate judgment, that all difficulties can be foreseen, and occasions of conflict avoided. They are more often worked out by single-minded intention which can endure through small errors and trifling disputes. The Lady Principal’s position was rendered more difficult by the tacit opposition of ‘local interest’ to the extension of boarding-house accommodation. The very existence of the College had been for many years precarious. Few people in Cheltenham wished it to become anything more than a suitable day-school for the sisters of boys at the College. Consequently a lady who took boarders was regarded with no special favour, and her actions were very often severely criticised.

In the difficult work of forming and increasing boarding-houses, mistakes were made by many. Miss Beale’s own belief in others, her habit of accepting people at their own estimate, of believing they were what she wished them to be, of judging character from her wide experience of books rather than from that of life, sometimes led her astray in her choice of fellow-workers. She who in her lonely position often felt the need of sympathy, to which she was ever responsive, was anxious to give it, even where she could not understand. This made her slow to bring about a change, lest sufficient opportunity for amendment had not been given. On the other hand, sometimes she could see that a change should be made promptly, but as she could not act alone a dangerous delay would ensue.

At first the position of a head of a boarding-house was little defined, and it was hard sometimes for a clever, well-intentioned woman, anxious to do the best for the children in her care, not to regard the work of the house as primary, that of the College as secondary only. One[172] lady, who was extremely capable and interested in her work, was ambitious to make her boarding-house a complete institution in itself, rather than an integral part of the College. Many of the girls in her charge came as her own relations or friends; she chose to adopt the position that it was right for her to decide whether they should be taught at her house or sent to College, and she denied the right of any one to interfere in her management. She also claimed the right to take another house for herself and her own children, where she could receive and entertain her friends. As soon as Miss Beale’s eyes were opened to the danger of such independent action, she did not hesitate a moment on the right course to be pursued with regard to the boarding-house management. She perceived that in this matter, as in the work of the school, there was no standing ground between obedience and independence. ‘I am so sorry for Miss Beale,’ wrote Mrs. William Grey to Miss Buss, ‘and so glad our Council determined to have nothing to do with Boarding-Houses. I cannot help thinking that the wisest course for the Cheltenham Council would be to wash their hands of them, only reserving to themselves, as we have, the right to refuse pupils from a house they disapprove of. There seems to me no tolerable alternative between this and the hostelry system.’

It may be safely said that never, even in moments of worst annoyance, did Miss Beale ever propose to ‘wash her hands’ of the boarding-houses. She felt they should be ‘organically related’ to the College life, a part of it which she could not do without, one which had in it great possibilities for extending and strengthening the influence of the College teaching, one which, neglected, must be an infinite source of difficulty, by which the[173] standard of the corporate life might be lowered, and its best work hindered.

So she persisted, lending her whole mind and strength to help in the evolution of a system which should be fair to individuals and the best for the College as a body. In 1890, after she had won her point, she wrote to Miss Arnold, then head-mistress of the Truro High School, who had consulted her on the subject:—

But the difficulties to be encountered on the way to this consummation were by no means slight, and involved great personal anxiety and pain. It was especially hard to her that she should be known by her own pupils to be in opposition to any who had been set over them. It was hard to feel that many with their partial knowledge of facts must misunderstand her, or childishly attribute her actions to commonplace motives of jealousy and love of power. Some part of these difficulties became fully public in 1882, when the College was involved in a libel case, and a lawsuit which was settled by arbitration. Exoneration from all blame followed in both instances. In the arbitration case the judgment was delivered by Mr. Justice Charles, and placed in a sealed envelope with the injunction that either party might open it on payment of £350. The Council did[174] not think it necessary to pay this money. Eventually those who had brought the action against the College did so, to find that the judgment had been pronounced against them on every count. It was a victory for the College and the Principal, but it had not been achieved without great toil and suffering on Miss Beale’s part. She dreaded the cross-examination with all the nervousness of a sensitive nature. Speaking of it afterwards, and of all it had cost her, she ever associated with the pain the remembrance of the immense help and sympathy she had received from her friend Mrs. James Owen, then a member of the Council, and would say, ‘Mrs. Owen said I should not be scorched in the fire.’ She was also upborne by the loyalty of her fellow-workers, both teachers and boarding-house mistresses, who signed a joint expression of their sympathy with her in her time of anxiety. Miss Buss gave more than words of sympathy, she was present herself in the arbitration-room when the case was tried. When it was over she wrote to her friend to this effect: ‘Yesterday I made the personal acquaintance of Miss ——. I fell in love with her because she is so intensely loyal to Cheltenham and to “dear Miss Beale.” I think if you could have heard her talk, unknown to her, you would have felt that the severe trial you have had to go through was more than compensated for by the love and loyalty it has called out to you and the College.’

The increase in the number of the boarding-houses, with their slightly different characteristics, brought an obvious advantage to the College. It led the way to still cheaper houses, and to the promotion of that work so dear always to Miss Beale, helping poor students and training teachers. Never heartily sympathetic with what is generally called charitable work, afraid of seeing[175] money given without a really equivalent return in usefulness and good work, there was one appeal to which she never turned a deaf ear. Probably she never knew any case of a girl honestly trying to improve herself, and failing in the effort for want of means, without trying to help her. Her usual plan was to advance money, which she found was almost invariably returned to her in the course of time. She would, wherever it seemed right, ask for its return on the ground that it might be of use to others, and because she was ever careful to make those she helped recognise that the possession of money is a stewardship only. But it was offered and lent and sometimes given in such a way that there should be no personal feeling of obligation and debt. ‘There is a loan fund,’ she would say when there occurred a question of the removal of a promising pupil from the College on the score of expense. And hardly any one ever heard her say more than this of the large system of help which she initiated and to a very great extent sustained alone. Some of the boarding-house mistresses generously took one girl free, or for very low terms, but the work was quietly done, known only to few.

The establishment of scholarships did not fit into Miss Beale’s educational schemes. She was not wholly opposed to them. One, in 1870, was accepted for the College, when Colonel Pearce bestowed a gift of £1000 to found the Pearce Scholarship for the daughter of an army officer, and Miss Beale in the last year of her life established one for Casterton. But she had a great horror of a system by which one school or college could buy promising pupils from others, and she held that it was hard on earnest students who were not naturally quick to see assistance given only to ability. ‘I have[176] refused,’ she said at a later period, ‘all scholarships except one, the chief condition of which is poverty. Three scholarships have been offered unasked, and an endowment for two prizes, which would have formed a good advertisement, every year, but I have refused all.’

As the College grew, Miss Beale felt more and more the need of a house where those who were trying to train themselves to be teachers could board inexpensively, and in 1876 was made that beginning which, as she said, was ‘full of blessing to the College, and of much use beyond its bounds.’ This was before the Maria Grey Training College was opened, and when there was no institution at all in which women could receive definite preparation for becoming teachers in secondary schools.

Miss Mary Margaretta Newman, member of a family which had shown itself sympathetic and interested in Miss Beale’s work from the first, offered to take a furnished house for a small number of students, to give her services, and contribute besides £75 a year towards expenses. Miss Newman had seen, whilst helping Miss Selwyn in her school at Sandwell, how much some such assistance was needed; how many girls of good social standing were struggling to obtain the training necessary to fit them to earn their living as teachers. She therefore provided a home for a few, and by her quiet, gentle influence supplemented the College work, and won the affections of her household. ‘What we felt most was the simplicity with which she gave so much. She seemed unconscious that she was doing anything remarkable in going to live in a small house, with one servant, and undertaking all the labour such an economy implied.’[47]

Miss Newman’s work went on for scarcely a year,[177] for at the end of 1877, after a very short illness, aggravated by the burden she had willingly laid upon herself, she died, leaving the work but just begun indeed, yet full of promise, and rendered by her sacrifice and death a sacred charge to the College and the Lady Principal. So indeed Miss Beale felt it to be, and in after years she would remember the life given in the cause she herself had so much at heart, and would write in her diary on December 31: ‘I think of Miss Newman’s death. Shall I not follow her example?’ Then for the first time Miss Beale, who had always maintained and acted on the principle that the College should earn its own living, asked for money to buy and furnish a suitable house for girls who could not afford the terms of the boarding-houses. She could not bear to refuse the many applications she received from those who were too poor to help themselves. About £1200 was immediately collected, one half being contributed by the College staff.

The work thus begun extended so rapidly that in little more than five years it was seen to be necessary that it should have a building of its own, and the trustees who had the management of the funds decided to build a residential College. This was opened under the name of St. Hilda’s in 1885.

The first ten years in the new buildings were a time of larger development for the College than any other in its history. Miss Beale’s own active life was also more full, and not less anxious, than it had ever been. There was never again a time of depression such as the year 1871 had been, when the College seemed to be almost losing ground, when in the whole course of the year only three fresh pupils entered. But the rapid increase on every hand of new, good, cheap schools[178] naturally fed her anxiety at a period when she had to justify to the Council her constant demand for more classrooms, music-rooms, halls, laboratories. She saw the immense importance of keeping ahead in these things. Other schools had endowments or guaranteed capital, the College could only increase and improve its plant out of the fees paid by the pupils. The Lady Principal did not wish it otherwise; but the constant remembrance of this made her very careful in expenditure, and ever desirous that all individual interest should be lost to sight in regard for the common welfare. There was something sharper than anxiety to bear over the boarding-house difficulties and the reconstitution of the Council. So much patience was needed, so much judgment in decisions, in avoiding mistakes, in retrieving them when made, that time and thought might well have been occupied with the care of actualities alone.

Yet it will not be surprising to some to know that it was just in these years that her inner life also became more full and more active, and that she was called upon to go through mental crises of great moment. The habit of prayer, difficult to maintain in a busy life, was strengthened by attendance at Retreats; a practice begun in 1877 to be continued yearly. Reading of every kind, with the exception of fiction, was diligently kept up, and thought was never more active.

The intellectual and spiritual struggles of this time permanently affected Miss Beale’s work and teaching. They cannot be passed over.

[179]

CHAPTER IX
DE PROFUNDIS

Dorothea Beale—largely owing to her sensitive nature and high ideals—had had her full share of the sufferings and disappointments of youth. And when she had gained the experience and habits of more mature years, when she had schooled herself to bear, when her position was assured, when she was free to associate largely with those most sympathetic to her, her zeal for the best ever caused a pressing sense of effort and strain. Certain commonplace troubles she had not known, as, for example, the want of money—a need which in fact she never experienced, and never really understood in others. And on the whole her health had been good. She regarded it as one of her first duties to consider this, and except for the fact that she had an inherent indifference to the character of the food she ate, the duty was not neglected. But in 1878 she was called upon to go through a period of weakness and anxiety which limited her powers for the time. In spite of her great self-control she was obliged to relax a little, to take more rest, while the effort to preserve that self-control made her seem, to[180] some who knew nothing of it, hard and unsympathetic. Very little indeed did she say of what she went through at this time, because she thought it best for others that she should be reserved and silent on the subject. The College and Miss Beale seemed to have a stability which could not be touched or changed, and she knew the value of this characteristic to her work. Probably no one in the College, and hardly any one outside it, perhaps none except her sisters and Miss Clarke, knew how near she was at this time to an absolute breakdown. The diary, still persistently kept, continued to be little more than a record of struggle against particular faults; yet here, from an occasional word and expression, the weariness and anxiety of the time may be gauged.

The year opened for Miss Beale with a special renewal of effort. Canon Body’s addresses at a Retreat she attended in Warrington Crescent in the first days of January were full of inspiration to her. This meant actively fresh effort, keener self-scrutiny, more watchfulness. ‘I remember,’ she wrote on January 24, the opening day of College, ‘I remember with grief the many neglects of the past. Forsake me not, neither reward me after my deserts.’

The next few weeks show a pathetic struggle against a growing sense of weakness. At first she blamed herself if duty was neglected, then as she knew herself to be ill, still felt that more might have been done, refusing to take sickness as an excuse. There are many living who were at College at this period, and to them the picture of this effort and suffering going on in the background of all that then seemed unfailingly vital and positive must have a double interest,—increasing tenderness for the memory of her who for their sakes was bearing a daily burden of pain, encouraging to fresh zeal by showing what a brave[181] spirit may do even in weakness and depression. A few extracts to show this follow:—

So ended a term of great anxiety. One medical opinion, doubtless referred to in her diary of March 20,[183] was of such a nature, that Miss Beale thought she must resign her work at once. At Hyde her sisters persuaded her to rest and to see another doctor, who took a more hopeful view, which was wholly justified by her gradual return to health.

Among the few who knew of this sorrow was the old pupil and friend, Miss Margaret Clarke. To her Miss Beale wrote from Hyde before she had received the second medical opinion, and the reply shows, far more than the diary can tell us, how deep was the gloom which hung over her way at this time. It might well have been written three years later, when Miss Beale was called upon to undergo greater suffering than any bodily pain alone can give, and suggests to those who read it now, that the darkness of that later time was shadowing her spirit even as early as this. The interest of it is the greater because it shows another who like Dorothea Beale, while faithful to her work, unsparing in care and thought for her children, had been called upon personally to know spiritual anguish. Such suffering, such loss, such deeper realisation of Divine love as are read in this letter are surely the portion of those who, having given much and helped many, are called to some further work of sympathy, needing perhaps ‘heart’s blood.’

After the Easter holidays Miss Beale was much better in health, and though her work through the summer was carried on with a good deal of strain and weariness, she was able to do it as fully as usual. The summer holidays[185] were spent partly at Hyde Court with her mother, and partly at Cheltenham, and by the end of them she was much rested and again able to take the walks she enjoyed. The opening day of the autumn term was September 17. ‘Help me not to disgrace my profession!’ she exclaimed in her diary of that day.

Two years after this date Hyde Court ceased to be the regular holiday home, for in November 1881 Mrs. Beale died. In one of her later letters to her ‘Principal’ daughter she had written: ‘I hunger to see you, my darling. You have been so good to me always, your reward will come.’ Such words of praise are dear indeed when the lips that spoke them are cold. They were treasured by Miss Beale. But in this bereavement, as in all times when made conscious of the shadow of death, specially of her own, she tried to face the mystery with clear-sighted gaze, to realise sincerely the impression it was meant to produce. She would not let expressions of comfort and hope, which she welcomed and accepted to the full, or any brightness brought by the kindness of the living, hide for her the penitential aspect of death.

The following fragmentary thoughts seem to come from the very chamber of death, and were written on the day of the month which was to be the date of her own death, twenty-five years later:—

During these years outside interests multiplied. New friendships were formed; some old ones were strengthened. The College Magazine, the first definite link forged with old pupils, was begun in 1880. Miss Beale made more acquaintances outside the College. In London she met many who shared her educational interests. In Cheltenham she attended, and often read and spoke at, a small literary gathering called the Society of Friends, which met from time to time at different houses. The diary becomes full of reference to Mrs. Middleton and Mrs. Owen. Through Mrs. Middleton she came to know Mr. Wilkinson’s[48] great evangelistic work in his fashionable London parish. She often went to hear him preach, read his books, and showed them to others. Mrs. Owen introduced her to the Life and philosophy of James Hinton, which made a very deep impression. At Mr. Owen’s house she met many earnest social workers and thinkers. Among these was Miss Ellice Hopkins, whose devoted work revived in tenfold force[187] her early pity for those who need to be ‘found.’ The increasing vigour of the College life and work was ever bringing in new ideas. Men who were making their mark as thinkers and teachers of their own special subjects often came to lecture. Among the most enthralled listeners to the eloquence of Professor William Knight, to the marvellous fairy-tales of science told by Professor Barrett, was the Lady Principal herself. Teachers and educationists of widely different views came to see the work of the school, often to find that the successful head-mistress who was able to show them so much was willing and eager to learn from them, and to see matters from their standpoint. Meanwhile she was reading as widely and eagerly as ever.

It was a time when long-accepted opinions were unsettled for many, by new scientific theories, or by a greater sensitiveness to the mystery of pain and the apparent indifference of a part of the so-called religious world in presence of the deepest wrongs and suffering. Dorothea Beale had to take her part in the special difficulties of her own day. The battle has been shifted to another ground for this generation, which scarcely knows what resistance was made, what suffering was endured by some heroic souls in the last, and at what a price a larger spiritual consciousness was bought.

The contact with so many minds, the widening circle of acquaintance with workers of different views and methods, and especially the appeal for aid in religious perplexity constantly made by those who came under her influence, doubtless helped to precipitate that sorrow, which, though in its acutest phase of short duration, was the sharpest trial Miss Beale was ever called upon to experience; one on which she never ceased to look back with horror. She who had said that she ‘could truly take[188] to herself the words of Faber,’[49] who had been from earliest childhood conscious of a protecting Presence, and had even then ‘found prayer a joy,’ now in late middle life felt herself, as it were, cast out. At an age when the inexperienced questionings of youth were over, when she hoped to find faith and hope strengthened by knowledge, it seemed for a moment as if they had died down altogether.

To write of it is to turn a page of soul-history so intimate, and for a moment so painful, that it may well be thought it should be passed over in silence. But to omit it would not be wholly faithful to the memory of one who wished certainly that this story of her inner life should be known to all who could be helped by it. To tell it, moreover, is to use her own words, for she wrote of it herself, more than once or twice. She felt, when she looked back on it afterwards, that she was obliged to go through this time of suffering in order that she might be better fitted to do the work given her, in order that others who had lost faith and hope might be helped to regain them, by knowing how she herself had passed from destruction and despair to hope and rebuilding.

The diary of this whole period is more than ever indicative of inward strife and unrest from which she would not by her own will escape to any comfort other than the highest. Among the entries, which are for the most part self-analytical and depressed, it is curious to find this: ‘Letter from —— Some vanity perhaps in the refusal.’

[189]

It was an offer of marriage from an old friend.

Once or twice there is a hint of coming sorrow before she was conscious what its nature would be. Once, when marking the anniversary of a friend’s death, she noted herself as ‘perplexed with the Incomprehensible.’ On June 27, 1881, a year before the darkness closed in, she wrote: ‘A great dread of coming sorrow, as of a calvary before me. If some bitter cup is to be poured out, Thy will be done. Only forsake me not! Salvator Mundi!’

The new year (of 1882) opened as usual with renewed self-dedication; but she mentions that she came back to Cheltenham on January 14, after the annual Retreat, ‘very broken.’ Though a persistent effort to keep up her religious rule was maintained, the clear shining of faith was much clouded. One who went to her for help at that time writes of it thus:—

This powerlessness to help those who turned to her in their spiritual need made more poignant the sense of[190] loss to one who loved to give freely as a mother to her children. ‘Then others came,’ she wrote afterwards of this time, ‘and one felt like the starving mother who saw the babe at her empty breast. I had no simple truths, no milk of the word to give them that they might grow thereby.’

A letter to a friend mentions books which had a destructive effect as read at this time. It was not Miss Beale’s habit deliberately to read a book which was likely to disturb or weaken faith. To an old pupil who once wrote to her of Strauss’s book, The Old Faith and the New, she had replied:—

Now, in this period of doubt and anxiety, books by any whom Miss Beale thought to be earnest seekers for truth, whether they were orthodox or not, were freely read.

The sense of loss and discomfort seems to have grown gradually all the year. ‘Poor lesson because depressed,’[191] she notes on a day in February. A fortnight later in church she was ‘wrestling like Jacob; Tell me Thy Name.’ Palm Sunday, however, brought some peace. ‘I think I touched His garment’s hem.’ Each day in that Holy Week she was at an early service before school hours began, and on Easter Day wrote: ‘This Lent has been blessed.’ In Easter week she notes that she finished reading Jukes’s New Man, ‘a beautiful book.’

But before the holidays were over there was ‘a dread of coming sorrow,’ a renewed feeling of deadness and want of devotion, only ‘passive following the inward guide.’ ‘Much troubled this morning,’ she wrote on Whit-Sunday, and the need for a ‘new life-pulse’ grew larger as the summer term wore on. Yet she persisted in striving to keep her devotional rules, and for her apparent want of zeal blamed only herself. At the end of that busy term, so full of work and interests and anxieties, she wrote: ‘Be with me in the holidays. I fear them.’

Of the suffering of that time she afterwards wrote fully, tracing the steps by which she was gradually led to think that the historical evidence on which she thought her faith rested was of no value. An extract from one account is given:—

[195]

Probably those to whom Miss Beale turned at first realised little of the distress that prompted her questions.

The darkest hour came during the early days of August when staying with friends, from whom she vainly hoped to conceal her sorrow.

It was perhaps some relief—as of one who faces the worst—to note in her diary each fresh incoming wave of sorrowful thought.

The immediate sequel to the story of these few days was told in a letter to a friend:—

The ‘religious conference’ was at Stoke, a little village in Shropshire, where the rector, the Rev. Rowland Corbet, was in the habit of gathering some who were earnestly studying the difficult questions of the day.[197] Miss Beale wrote of these gatherings in the letter already quoted:—

That a door to the light was at this conference quickly opened for Miss Beale may be seen in the letters she wrote, on her return to Cheltenham after it was over, to the friends who had helped her so much:—

To Mrs. Russell Gurney:—

She felt like one set free from prison, but the newly recovered liberty was used with caution. ‘You will like to know,’ she wrote to a friend in the following year, ‘that the fitful gleams of sunlight, which used to come after the dark night, have become now something like a steady shining. I was able to get a few quiet days at Christmas, and then first I began to feel that I should be able to give thanks for this terrible experience, and the thankfulness has grown ever since.’

As she said, the thankfulness grew. But in the very heart of the fire she had felt no regret, known no complaining. She was willing to suffer, if by that means she might help the more. On August 15, just a week after the day she always remembered as ‘Tuesday the 8th,’ she wrote of one whose calling in life was to teach others: ‘You say he has been reading sceptical books;[199] I want him to go on doing so. He must know how deep the questions go, or he will be fighting windmills, as I have done.’

It will be asked by what steps the ascent was made, and what the height from which the new spiritual horizons were discerned; what was the train of thought which brought back the possibility of saying the Church’s Creed? The mental process, if it can be disentangled from an exercise which engaged all the faculties of soul and spirit, was probably that suggested in the words of Amiel: ‘Chacun ne comprend que ce qu’il retrouve en soi.’ But the research and the retrieval were not simply individual and within, they involved the scrutiny of widespread religious instincts, cravings and needs. They were aided above all by the contemplation of martyr deaths and martyr lives, which in their continuous and abiding witness to the faith are seen to constitute a claim to authority.

Miss Beale herself strove to show how the doubting spirit was silenced by an answer of faith, in a little paper called ‘Building,’ which is dated September 8. Here she wrote:—

Another paper of this period, entitled ‘Of my Religious Opinions,’ concludes thus:—

The writer of these words might indeed have sung, ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room.’ But the daily journal shows no trace of exultation, far less of relaxing watchfulness. It is surely impossible to exaggerate the importance of the jealous care with which devotional rules were guarded. More than all the high thoughts and noble imaginings with which she was so wonderfully gifted, this lifelong obedience came to her aid in the great crisis. Habits of prayer, daily acts of self-sacrifice and self-consecration, had been maintained even when their meaning seemed to be clouded. When sight was restored, when a greater sense of spaciousness came into her life, they were there to protect her in the newly found liberty. The tale of them remains to show that the doubts of this dark year were akin to that thirst for God which in all ages has been the portion of the saints.

May it not be said that they were the outcome of a passionate desire to help; that this descent into darkness as of the grave was necessary to one who yearned to give[202] herself utterly to aid others to find the way to the light? ‘Can ye drink indeed?’ was asked of those who willed to share the divine work and joy, and in all times it has been given to a few to be brought through suffering into that region of consciousness in which they are made ‘able.’

[203]

CHAPTER X
THE GUILD

Miss Beale’s circle of influence definitely widened beyond the College itself in 1880 when the first number of the Magazine appeared. It opened with a characteristic introduction from the Lady Principal, who up to her death remained the editor.

The Magazine was started, said Miss Beale, in order that past and present members of the College might enrich each other by interchange of thoughts. Mere information concerning the temporary doings of one’s friends was a secondary consideration, the value of which was, however, fortunately seen by sub-editors and others. A column of births, deaths, and marriages became established in the Magazine as early as the second number. This naturally in time developed in interest. The obituary column came to include all who had the slightest connection with the College; newspaper accounts of those who were in any way distinguished were also added.

In 1887 the first Chronicle of passing events belonging to the College and its old members was inserted, though the space for it was grudgingly afforded by the[204] editor, who could not bear to limit her space for the budding ideas she loved to foster. Soon, however, she came to value what was practically a contemporary history of the College, and as her pride in her old pupils increased with years, it became a great pleasure to notice all their doings in varied walks of life. Engaged in philanthropic work, in literature, in art or society, they were all of interest to her, and not among the least dear were those whose homes lay in foreign parts, those closely connected with the diplomatic service and the growth of the British Empire.[55] The Chronicle was a portion of the Magazine sure of finding readers, but there was no page more welcome to all than the brief but pithy preface in which the editor named the chief contents, touched on some matter of note to the readers, or urged forward the lagging subscriber.

As the College interest widened with the ever-increasing number of old pupils, the Chronicle became too limited a record to stand alone. When the Magazine was about seventeen years old ‘Parerga’ appeared for the first time, telling of activities which lay outside the immediate scope of College work, yet were due in part to the influence of the Alma Mater, to ‘the spiritual force, the higher volition and action.’ Miss Beale, who found in the Magazine a strong link with her large scattered family, also in later years freely printed letters she received from various members abroad. She did not care much for articles on travel, writing on one occasion that she received too many descriptions, and would like in their place to have more records of observation in the fields of[205] natural history and other sciences. But she treasured letters, and showed them widely. Indeed, it was sometimes startling for the writer of a private letter to Miss Beale to find whole extracts published in the Magazine for all the world to see.

Almost from the beginning there were reviews of books. These were generally written by the editor. There were also notices of books by old pupils. Of these Miss Beale was proud, and she never failed to mention them, often reprinting portions of reviews by the press; but she would not review them herself, saying, ‘Books by old pupils claim our notice; we must leave criticism to those less interested in the writers.’

Fortunately Miss Beale was not content with merely reviewing and editing. Many a number of the Magazine contained a long contribution from herself, such as an article reprinted from another periodical, an address given at a gathering of old pupils, or at some more general meeting. The first two editions of the History of the College were also printed here. Of her articles which were not of special College interest, the most notable were those upon Browning. One of these, written in spring 1890, shortly after the poet’s death, contains a brief clear statement of the value of his philosophy. The other writers of the Magazine have been chiefly old pupils, some of whose names, as, for example, those of Jane Harrison, Beatrice Harraden, Bertha Synge, May Sinclair, are known in wider fields of literature. But any who made a sincere effort were welcomed, encouraged, and—edited. Present pupils have rarely written, but of late an attempt has been made to secure more contributions from these. Members of the Council, and others connected with the College by the ties of friendship or work, frequently helped the Magazine with papers or[206] verses. For years every number was enriched with a poem or article from the pen of Mrs. James Owen, that friend whose keen intellectual interests and strong sympathy were put so largely at Miss Beale’s service when this literary venture was first made.

To find contributors Miss Beale went even beyond the outer circle of the College. ‘We always hope to have some good writing in our Magazine, thus to maintain a high standard,’ she had said at the beginning. She liked to gain the notice of those who were eminent in literature or science for this dearly loved literary child, and as occasion brought her in contact with any who were distinguished for the things she appreciated she would send them the Magazine, often asking for a paper. Letters from people of widely differing thought and position, acknowledging the receipt of the Magazine, are now in the College archives. They vary in warmth and interest. The late Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol wrote in 1889: ‘However busy I may be, I always find time to read portions of [the Magazine], and I am always thankful to recognise not merely the cultivated, but the wise and—what we men specially value—the womanly tone that characterises it. I read with much interest your article on the Sorbonne gathering.’ Bishop Westcott in 1890 wrote, on receiving the number containing Miss Beale’s ‘In Memoriam’ article on Browning: ‘May I confess that when the copy of the Ladies’ College Magazine came this morning with the letters, my correspondence was at once interrupted? I felt constrained to read your words on Browning, just and wise and helpful and suggestive.’ Some notes are little more than the acknowledgment of a polite friend who had ‘already cut the pages.’ The request for contributions was not always granted;[207] sometimes it was won by a little importunity. It brought about rather an amusing incident with Mr. Ruskin, whose letters on the subject and on some of Miss Beale’s own Magazine articles are too characteristic to be omitted.

Miss Beale sent him the number containing her paper on ‘Britomart.’ He replied at once:—

Five days later he wrote:—

Miss Beale replied to this by sending her paper on ‘Lear,’ to which came this response:—

Two days later came the following:—

After this letter there was a pause in a correspondence which had been kept up pretty briskly on various subjects. In June, however, Miss Beale wrote again,—the purport of her letter may be gathered from the answer.

Mr. Ruskin permitted the reprint of a few extracts from his own writings in the Magazine, on which his criticism as a whole was not very encouraging. One of his letters, indeed, called forth a protest from Miss Beale, to which he replied thus:—

And again a few days later:—

Mr. Shorthouse also once contributed to the Magazine, sending a little story called ‘An Apologue.’

The work entailed by the Magazine was, on the whole, pleasant and interesting to its editor. But she was grieved sometimes if she thought old pupils did not appreciate it, or if contributions fell short. It was not always easy to get enough articles of the kind she desired, and the difficulty was increased by the severe censorship she exercised. ‘About one hour wasted in fretting over Magazine,’ runs the diary of April 2, 1891.

The Magazine was not without its faults. ‘How bad the best of us!’ says Punch, according to Ruskin. But it had the conspicuous merit of offering encouragement to young writers, of promoting a spirit of unity, and fostering sympathetic interest among those whose lives were necessarily far apart. ‘We hope,’ Miss Beale had said in her first preface, ‘that the papers on work may[210] be helpful in suggesting ways of usefulness.’[56] This hope was practically realised. How far the young writers profited by each other’s thoughts can be less easily gauged; but doubtless some learned at least one lesson the Magazine was meant to teach, that if they intended to work, they ‘must not shrink from the hardest and most fruitful work, i.e. thinking.’[57]

Miss Beale’s influence was again extended in manifold and ever-developing ways when, in 1883, the first meeting of former pupils was held in the College.

At this date the number of regular pupils was five hundred. Only six years before a proposal had been made to limit the numbers to three hundred, but each year saw an increase, and a consequent addition to the ranks of those who carried the influence of the College into the larger world outside.

It had been felt for some time by the Principal and others to whom the College was dear, that an association of old pupils should be formed, but of what nature and name could not be determined without a representative meeting. A suitable occasion for this presented itself in 1883, which was a sort of Jubilee year for the College, Miss Beale having then been its Principal for twenty-five years. Many old pupils expressed a wish to mark the great occasion by a personal gift to Miss Beale; she, as was to be expected, asked that it might be given to her ‘husband,’ the College. It was a moment of almost unsullied prosperity, as could be seen by the buildings which were constantly growing more stately and suitable. In the previous year they had been much enlarged, and the whole College life benefited by the addition of the Music and Art wing. The old music-rooms were little better than cupboards, the[211] new ones contained light, air, and space, as well as the necessary pianoforte. The first drawing-room was but an insufficient classroom, in which a cast of any size could not be placed. The new studio was spacious and properly lighted. Both additions at this period spoke of Miss Beale’s method in educational development, also of the order in which her own full mental life unfolded. First she would have the exact, the severe, the discipline of grammar and rule, then the expansion of beauty in thought and symbol.

And the gift of the old pupils could not have been better chosen. It took the form of an organ for what was then the largest hall, the First Division Room. Here the daily prayers of the three divisions took place. Sir Walter Parratt settled the specifications for the organ, which was placed above the Lady Principal’s dais.

The choir, which up to this time had been dependent on the aid of a harmonium, was augmented and improved, and the daily music at the school prayers became a feature of College life in which Miss Beale took delight. Occasionally her directions to the choir were embarrassing. She liked music to be very piano, and required a great deal of expression to bring out the full meaning of the words sung.

Mr. Ruskin was also momentarily interested by it. He was as suggestive and dogmatic on the subject as on any other that he touched. Once he wrote to Miss Beale, ‘All music properly so called is of the Celestial Spheres. It aids and gives law to Joy, or it ennobles and comforts Sorrow.’ On hearing of the organ and ‘girl-organist,’ he hoped ‘to be able to work out some old plans with her,’ and unfolded them thus:—

Miss Beale obviously replied to this with some questions about the training of the choir, for Mr. Ruskin’s next and rapidly following letter closes thus:—

Besides the organ, Miss Beale’s wedding gifts included the first light of a stained-glass window above the new grand staircase. This was drawn by Miss Thompson, and executed by Clayton and Bell. Miss Beale herself chose the subject for the whole—a series of scenes from her beloved story of ‘Britomart.’

Over and above the opening of the new buildings, and the installation of the wedding gifts, there was in the early part of the summer term some excitement and much pleasant sense of preparation for the gathering of old pupils fixed for the 6th and 7th of July.

Then, into the midst of the glad anticipation, came as[213] with transcendent suddenness Mrs. Owen’s death on June 19. Hers was indeed

But for many the happiness of the coming meeting was marred, most of all for her in whose honour it had been largely arranged. Miss Beale made no change, but went through all the proceedings as they had been planned, dwelling never for a moment on her sense of bereavement and loss, but speaking calmly even in public of the life that had passed out of sight.

The first meeting, on the evening of July 6, was a conversazione in the Upper or Second Division Hall. An unexpectedly large number of old pupils were present, and on the next day at the ordinary College prayers Miss Beale gave what was practically the first Guild address. Though made on an occasion of so much personal interest and gratification to herself, this address was remarkable not only for the piercing insight with which she ever penetrated below what was apparent or obvious, but also for what, for want of a better word, must be called its soberness. Touched, emotional as the speaker always was, keenly alive to the sense of union and communion with all lives that in the highest sense had come in contact with her own, happy in recognising the College to be a step by which souls might ascend out of mere material interests, marking with joy its noble work in the progress of the ‘higher education’ of women, she chastened all excess of feeling by the calm sincerity with which she could contemplate ‘Even in the green, the faded tree.’ ‘Schools too,’ she said, ‘like the members of which they are composed, have their period of growth, manhood, and decay.[214] Some tell us the first is over for us, and that we, too, have settled down into vigorous manhood. I am not so sure that we have quite done with growth, even in the outside body; but however that may be, I trust there is that among us, which is not even like the most substantial building, not like the outward form, liable to decay and death.’

Thus quietly she spoke, marking for all that heard her that there was no commonplace elation or poor ambition in her thoughts and feelings for her school. On this really momentous occasion for the College, when its members as a whole were summoned to catch a glimpse of all it could be of help and blessing in a far larger world than its own, the Principal spoke less of work accomplished than of growth, and ‘the silent witness of a beautiful life as a power to bless.’ She said less about the gifts with which the College had been enriched, than of some visible sacraments of Nature with which these gifts should bring them into touch. She dwelt specially on the great meanings of music. ‘In the Psalm of Life each is necessary to the perfection of that glorious music, which we shall hear and understand when the discords of earth have been resolved.’

In conclusion Miss Beale sketched the possibility of an association of old pupils, such as already existed in some boys’ schools, and was not wholly unknown among girls. ‘When I read of meetings of old Etonians, Rugbeians, Marlburians, and of works undertaken by them in common, and know how strong is the tie of affection which binds many of our old pupils to their Alma Mater, I have often wished there were some means of uniting us into an association.’ She named also the uses and aims of such an association. It is needless to say that though its members strive to bear in mind the[215] objects their Principal and President put before them, rules, precisely to embody them, could not be framed.

Miss Beale added that secretaries to the proposed association had already been appointed: Mrs. Ashley Smith for the general work and organisation, Miss Flora Ker as local secretary. This announcement of her appointment to what proved to be a very strenuous work was the first suggestion that Mrs. Smith received that she should even undertake it. In an article in the next Magazine Miss Beale unfolded her plan more fully, suggesting a few rules. She proposed further that the badge of the association should be a little brooch engraved with a figure of her beloved Britomart.

The idea of a guild of old pupils was eagerly received, and a committee at once formed to deal with its organisation. In all these arrangements Miss Beale showed great strength of mind and self-control in being able to stand aside and let others work out the details of[216] the scheme, even submitting her own judgment to that of the younger ones, whom she thought called upon to do the work. Yet she was in a true sense President of the Guild, guiding and directing where she would not command. Indeed, this ever-growing society which multiplied interests for her was largely her own inception, at a time when her special work, the College, was also increasing rapidly. The power of mind which could keep the right hold on both is certainly rare.

The first committee consisted of associates of the College and a few other old pupils. Meetings were held to draw up the organisation of the new society, and this was made known at large in a delightful article by Mrs. Ashley Smith in the Magazine for spring 1884. In this the writer adventured far enough into the future to be able to suggest the possibility, at no very distant date, of some corporate work, ‘such as is done by many boys’ schools,’ but in 1884 the time for this had not arrived for Cheltenham girls.

The Lower Hall, Ladies’ College Cheltenham
from a photograph by Miss Bertha Synge.

The second large gathering of old pupils, which took place on July 8 and 9, 1884, is always reckoned as the first meeting of the Guild, the association being on that occasion formally founded under the name of ‘The Guild of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College.’ It is interesting to note that what then seemed a large gathering really included less than eighty former pupils of the College; ten years later, at the fourth Guild meeting, there were nearly five hundred, and the number has increased ever since. The daisy was chosen as an emblem for the Guild: its choice and its significance were explained by the President in her address on Saturday, July 9. In a second address at this time, given after the candidates for Guild membership had received their ‘Masonic sign,’ Miss Beale dwelt chiefly on the practical questions arising[217] out of the existence of the new association. She spoke of the difficulty of decision among the many opinions which must necessarily exist in a large college; she hoped that ‘whatever decision might finally be arrived at, all would cheerfully submit to it, and if their own individual tastes were not in every case gratified, would find their satisfaction in giving up their own wishes for the sake of the majority. She herself had had to submit, she hoped cheerfully, to an adverse vote.’ The rules were then read. Of these it is sufficient to say here that they made it difficult for any one whose life was spent in a mere pleasure-seeking spirit to be a member of the Guild. The rules were accepted for two years, and two courses of study were suggested for junior members.

In the year following these meetings, Mrs. Ashley Smith wrote an article for the Magazine on the reports received from various members and on the general working of the Guild, which by the end of 1885 numbered nearly two hundred members. This is now an old story, nor is there anything specially remarkable in the many details of work in Sunday-schools and coffee-clubs. Yet even at the time when the Guild, compared with its present self, looked little more than ‘seven maids with seven mops,’ the tale of individual work done shows that already much quiet persistent effort was being made by Miss Beale’s old girls. This association, founded on principles rather than rules, was indicative of its origin in a mind which habitually dwelt rather on being than doing. The small beginning, the gradual steady growth, the outcome of ideals and thoughts, were consistent with the whole of the College history. And to re-read the story of the foundation of the Guild is to remember once more how many quiet, unobtrusive, untiring workers have helped to make that history. In especial,[218] the immense work and patience of the secretaries can perhaps never be adequately recognised: the labour of merely reading and tabulating the reports was considerable.

On another occasion, after enumerating the different charitable and self-improving societies to which Guild members belonged, she said:

The reports, a matter of obligation to the junior members of the Guild, were often looked over by the President, who would surprise the secretaries by her detailed knowledge of the home surroundings and characters of girls whom she hardly knew by sight. ‘What is so-and-so doing now?’ she would ask, and on being told, would say, ‘She ought to be doing more,’ or ‘less,’ and perhaps make some other criticism. Not less surprising was her memory of former discussions. ‘She never forgot,’ writes Mrs. Griffith, ‘what had been said. Sometimes she began again, continuing the conversation just where we left off, after a three months’ interval.’

The secretaries were also impressed by the way in[219] which the President held herself bound by its smallest rules. Miss Helen Mugliston, who succeeded Mrs. Griffith as General Secretary in 1898, said Miss Beale was ‘perfect to work under. Having given you the task, she gave also her absolute trust and support throughout the whole of it.’

The second meeting of the Guild was held in June 1886, lasting from a Friday evening to the following Tuesday morning. The President’s opening address dealt with work and duty. This year, for the first time, the Guild was also addressed by an outside speaker, the Dean of Gloucester. Mrs. Ashley Smith, in summing up her impressions of the gatherings of this year, rejoiced in the interest the members took in the proceedings. ‘We cannot,’ she added, ‘certainly be accused of a servile unanimity in opinions or in the expression of them; but I hope we are united in underlying principles.’

It was not until two years later that the sense of fellowship was strengthened, and the individual desires to help others directed by the resolve to organise a corporate work, a work in which not only all Guild members might help according to their opportunities, but in which also all old pupils and others connected with the College might be invited to join. This was formally proposed at the Guild meeting of 1888, and an idea as to what shape it might take was thrown out in a paper then read, which told for the first time something of what Miss Beale had done by means of the Loan Fund.

To say that Miss Beale wished the corporate work to be of such a nature as to carry on that which she had long been doing for impecunious students, but feebly expresses what was really an earnest desire and hope. The claim she had upon the Guild, the importance that[220] must attach to her lightest wish, was recognised; and yet,—yet, many felt that there were stronger reasons still why another kind of work should be chosen. Consequently no decision could be made at once, and those who had heard and discussed the paper parted after merely voting that the Guild ‘should undertake some corporate work.’ Among so many workers there were necessarily many ideas; the question was too important to be hastily decided, and it was resolved to give time for suggestions to be made and considered before anything final was done. The Committee appointed to consider these reduced them to three schemes of work, on which all members were asked to vote. These were:—

It was but natural that President and members should have different ideas on such an occasion. Dorothea Beale, who had never ceased to hear and obey the call she had received as a girl to help women, and with them the race, by means of improved education, longed to see those she had taught and trained freely sharing with others the very same advantages they had received. The difficulties which beset her own youth were still fresh in her mind. The need for good teachers still existed. She had seen the work she wanted the Guild to take up in operation for years, knew that it did not pauperise, that it blessed giver and receiver, and was increasingly fruitful, like good seed in good ground. On the other hand, she had a profound suspicion of much charitable[221] work of the day, thinking that ‘it will quickly perish because it does not aim at developing energy, inward power. To do for others what they ought to do for themselves is to degrade them in the order of creation.’[59] She could far more easily bear to see people suffering from hunger and nakedness than from loss of will power and sense of responsibility. This was partly, perhaps, because she did not know nor in the least realise the miseries and difficulties of extreme poverty.

Miss Beale’s misgivings about the East End work were probably never quite set at rest. Writing to Mrs. Charles Robinson in 1899, she said: ‘I shall perhaps sleep two nights at St. Hilda’s East. I feel the whole question of Settlements most difficult. It was undertaken against my judgment, and yet the guidance all the way seems to point to its being right. Sisters and Deaconesses are much better for this work, yet there are some whom we can enlist who will never join and could not join “Orders.”’

The Guild members who had been trained by their head not always acquiescingly to ‘do the next thing,’ but to think out questions, to plan carefully for the best if hardest, belonged to a new generation and had received another call. They saw how greatly educated women were needed to deal with charity organisation, with labour problems, with the children of the poor in schools and workhouses. Many of them were already at work for these. They felt, too, that they should take their part in helping to rouse others to study and work for the poor. On the other hand, they saw the need for cheap, good girls’ education to be one which was lessening every year. They had never felt it themselves, had had no struggle for training under pressure of adverse circumstances.[222] Finally, they must have known that it was work which Miss Beale would not fail to carry on, meeting every necessity which was brought to her personal notice.

On May 6, 1889, a general meeting of the Guild was held in London to consider further the lines on which the adopted scheme should be carried out. It was decided that the Guild Settlement should be made in London, in the parish of St. John’s, Bethnal Green, described by its vicar, the Rev. G. Bromby, who warmly welcomed the Cheltenham workers, as a ‘typical East End parish of the better sort.’

At this meeting the President introduced the subject by saying:

In these few words only did Miss Beale at the time announce her own disappointment and anxiety. There was much more she might have said, which she did in effect say in an early draft of her speech, which she fortunately did not destroy. Here her misgivings show themselves plainly. They were due to her foresight and judgment, yet it is likely that in some ways the untried workers, whom she feared were lightly taking upon themselves responsibilities to which they might prove unequal, really knew more than herself of the scope and details of the actual task before them.

This is what Miss Beale wrote but did not say:—

[223]

Much happened to reconcile Miss Beale to the Settlement scheme. Miss Catherine Newman, as her sister had done ten years before in aid of poor students, volunteered to undertake the management of the work gratuitously, and to pay her own expenses. Miss Newman was an old College pupil and a member of the Guild.[224] She was also a trained nurse, with long experience of work among the poor. Miss Newman’s offer and the appeal of her old friend, Mr. Bromby, had weight with Miss Beale. She felt less anxious about the efforts of her ‘children’ if safe-guarded by the experience of those she knew and trusted. Miss Newman could also sympathise with Miss Beale’s own disappointment and anxiety, while she was confident of her large-mindedness in this matter. This may be gathered from a letter she wrote to her in the course of the proceedings at this time:—

At the very moment that the Cheltenham Settlement was about to be opened in Bethnal Green, the ladies of Oxford were prepared to start one in the same district. For the convenience of both, an arrangement was made by which the two sets of workers could live together for a time, under one head, Miss Newman, until the resources of each, and the work they were called upon to do, were better known. Mayfield House, close to St. John’s Church, was therefore taken and formally opened as a Ladies’ Settlement (at that time the second in London), on October 26, 1889. Four years later, as suddenly as her sister at Jersey House, Miss Newman died at her post. ‘What can one feel,’ wrote a friend to Miss Beale, ‘except that her death seems to seal the whole life with the heroism of service.’

This trouble was the first link in a chain of circumstances which led, in the course of three or four years, to the removal of the Settlement to Shoreditch, where it became an important branch of that work to which Miss Beale gave the title of St. Hilda’s.

[226]

CHAPTER XI
ST. HILDA’S WORK

Those who had often the advantage of hearing Miss Beale speak, either in general addresses to present or past pupils, or in the more regular course of literature lessons, soon learned that there were certain heroic names which had for her an almost romantic fascination. Among those of great women who influenced her imagination are specially to be remembered St. Hilda, St. Catherine of Siena, la Mère Angélique, Mme. Guyon. Of these the most dominant, the most inspiring was that of the great Northumbrian abbess, known to those whom she taught and ruled by the name of ‘Mother,’ not by virtue of her office, but on account of her signal piety and grace.[60] Hilda, the earnest student who ‘had been diligently instructed by learned men, who so loved order that she immediately began to reduce all things to a regular system.’ Hilda, the patron of the first English religious poet, ‘who obliged those under her to attend much to the reading of the Holy Scriptures; who taught the strict observance of justice and other virtues, particularly of peace and charity.’[61] This great[227] Hilda and her work were to Dorothea Beale not merely romantic names, they were an ideal, an inspiration. And when the due time came, though for the sake of Miss Newman she hesitated for a moment over the alternative title of St. Margaret’s Hall, the name of St. Hilda was the one she chose to grace her own foundations. There are, possibly, members of the Ladies’ College who felt a pang of envy when the Students’ House became St. Hilda’s College. They could have borne to exchange the prim early Victorian title bestowed by the godfathers of 1856 for this more inspiring name. There is, however, consolation in the thought that the Ladies’ College is still free to adopt the name of its second founder.

St. Hilda’s Hall, as it was at first called, was formally opened on November 27, 1886; but its real building was a much longer process, even if dated only from Miss Margaret Newman’s death at the close of 1877. Miss Beale thought much and anxiously how she could best lay out the money which she and her staff and some friends had given in order that Miss Newman’s work might be carried on and enlarged. She advised with a few who cared for education and for the College. Among those who helped and counselled were Miss Soames, who subscribed largely to St. Hilda’s, and Mr. Brancker, some of whose letters on the subject remain. If there seems now to be little that is original in the suggestions and plans discussed by Miss Beale and Mr. Brancker, it is because they were to a great extent pioneers, and among the first to bring about a real system for attaining the educational objects they had at heart. In 1878 Mr. Brancker wrote:—

In a second letter on the same subject Mr. Brancker said:—

Eventually the ideas expressed in these letters were[230] carried out in the arrangement of St. Hilda’s, which became not only a home for pupils who could not afford the normal boarding fees, but also a residence for senior students who needed more liberty than they could have in the other houses. By this means the house was put on a self-supporting basis. Miss Beale could have borne with no other. The Loan Fund, up to this time, had been the means of assisting over a hundred students. Miss Beale now asked a few personal friends to support it, pointing out that such a means of help was far better than any system of scholarships, which she never ceased to dislike, and against which she continually spoke and wrote. Her chief objections to scholarships have been already noted.[62] She was moreover opposed to the principle of material giving involved in the system. She only cared, at any time, to give what would embrace and ennoble character. She thought it best that people should pay for advantages received, thought they would value them more, thought it made girls more careful and self-denying when first the management of money came into their own hands, to feel that it was not their own to do as they pleased with. A mere gift seemed to her like a dead thing compared with the money which, lent and returned and then lent to others, was thus used over and over again. Yet the want of response to appeals for the Loan Fund must have been partly due to a difference of opinion on its method rather than to want of sympathy with Miss Beale’s aims. There are many who feel an objection to saddling with a loan a young teacher starting on her work, or who recognise that an unpaid loan may help to lower the standard in money affairs, and on that account shrink from giving help in this way. There[231] are few indeed who could lend money so successfully as Miss Beale could, because there are few who could so successfully command repayment. Of the first £500 advanced by the Loan Fund, £495 was repaid in a very few years. The pressure she would exercise for repayment sometimes led to the wrong notion that she cared for money for its own sake. She had at all times great skill in wringing the utmost use out of a sum of money to promote those ends for which she lived; but in the ordinary commonplace sense she was indifferent to money and the things for which it is usually exchanged. Her own personal life was as bare of luxury when she was a rich woman as it was when her capital was reckoned in hundreds only. But she did care deeply for character, and anxiously avoided all forms of easy generosity which might injure those she sought to help.

For several years before a turf was cut for St. Hilda’s College, Miss Beale was, as she would herself have expressed it, building it: student teachers were being trained in the College, and in 1881 one of these passed the Cambridge Examination in the Theory and Practice of Education. Gradually she gathered an increasing body of students in a separate house—a house which was as unlike as any could possibly be to the beautiful home which was shortly to be opened. She waited year after year for money with which to build without interrupting the work she had begun in assisted education, and for the reasons named made no public appeal for it. It was enough, she maintained, to state the real needs—to show the value of a work by the way it was done—and thus let it make its own appeal for support. She had a horror of plant which might be a mere empty shell, or which in its establishment might become a[232] diversion of energy from spiritual work. She felt this especially in the matter of church building, as may be seen in the following extract from a letter: ‘What I disapproved of was the amount of begging for the Cathedral. I do not disapprove of it, but I think you know what I felt. However, the Bishop will do all he can to make it a strong spiritual centre. I can never get over the feeling of spiritual destitution at one very beautiful cathedral.’ It was also, perhaps less consciously, a principle not to take money except from those who were willing for her to carry out her own ideas. She wrote to one friend in 1888:—

And again in 1884 to one who helped her Oxford scheme:—

[233]

As the time to begin the actual erection of the house drew near she had no exultation over the fulfilment of a dream. Yet in the beginning of August 1885, surrounded by young teachers from her own and other schools drawn together for a Retreat and a brief educational conference, her mind was naturally full of that dream. Some few of her own thoughts about it she wrote down; such as the following, with their characteristic heading:—

The first stone of St. Hilda’s College was quietly laid by Canon Medd (one of the trustees and a member of the Ladies’ College Council) in 1884. The opening, which took place on November 27, 1885, was far more dignified than that its illustrious parent had known in 1856.

‘The ceremony of opening the institution,’ so ran the[234] account in the Cheltenham Examiner, ‘which was performed by the Bishop of the diocese, took place at three o’clock, and was attended by a large and influential company, who assembled in the study, a spacious—but on this occasion none too spacious—apartment on the ground floor.’ Among those present were the Dean of Winchester,[63] then Chairman of the College Council, who conducted the short service, the late Bishop of Ely, and many of the clergy of the town, besides the friends and benefactors of St. Hilda’s. On entering the study the eye was caught at once by the words which Miss Beale quoted so often that they seemed like the motto of her work: ‘Knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up.’ Here, in this ‘Godly Place,’ as he called the house, the Bishop of Gloucester, who since 1875 had been both nominally and actually Visitor of the Ladies’ College, gave an address full of sympathy for the ideals of the founder.

Thus the first resident Training College for teachers, other than elementary, was planned, and built, and opened. In order to make its position more permanent it was constituted into a separate College with a Council of its own. In 1886 a statue of St. Hilda was presented and placed in the hall. On unveiling it, Miss Beale spoke of the Saint’s life, and especially of her work as a teacher. She concluded with a thought, the deeper for the personal touch in it, of memory of what she had had to bear in the past, and indeed in later years also, of misconception and misrepresentation.

St. Hilda’s College was scarcely built and opened before it was necessary to enlarge it by adding a new wing. It was not until this had been done that Miss Beale felt free to devote herself to another foundation, which also was to bear the name of the sainted Abbess.

As early as the year 1882 Miss Beale, attracted by the increasing facilities offered to women by the elder universities, had purchased three acres of land in north Oxford. These she retained for building uses should the right moment or a definite reason for such a purpose occur. But no one showed much sympathy with the scheme, there was no offer of money, and for long much of her own capital was absorbed in St. Hilda’s, Cheltenham. Impulsive to a fault as she often was, Miss Beale could school herself to wait. After five years came an opportunity of purchasing a ready-made college in Dr. Child’s beautiful house on the Cherwell. It seemed well to accept this, and begin there the new house of education.

There were many reasons why Miss Beale allowed so long a time to elapse between her purpose and her act. Her own ideas and her aims for her Hall at Oxford shaped themselves but gradually. Somerville College[64] and Lady Margaret Hall were still in their first youth. Miss Beale’s scheme seemed uncalled for where there were already so many workers for the cause of women’s[236] education in the field. Her educational experience had been different from that of those whose minds had developed among university surroundings; her methods were unacademic, unconventional. Consequently there were some to warn her as she prepared to take her new step: ‘The University may easily receive a shock from which it will take long to recover.’

It may well be asked even now, as it was often asked at the time, why Miss Beale wanted to come to Oxford at all, and particularly while she was uncertain of the value of University Examinations for women. But she valued even more than the certificate gained by taking schools the atmosphere of Oxford. She saw that the students of St. Hilda’s, Cheltenham, missed this. When she founded that institution she had written of it, that she hoped it ‘would be a Hall similar to the Halls at Oxford and Cambridge.’ Now she felt the need of what only the older universities could give. She hoped her new house might become a place of intellectual enlargement and refreshment such as Oxford could best supply to some who had already begun their work of teaching, and who needed new thoughts and inspiration, more time for thought, a higher intellectual standard. She thought that a year at Oxford could supply that feature in education which is sometimes more developed at home.

Yet these reasons were secondary. The purchase of three acres of ground at Oxford was a definite result of her own suffering of mind in 1882. As she emerged from that she at once began to build in vision a house where teachers should be established in the faith, where they should learn to feel that their calling was not to do mere journeyman work, but to deal with the deep problems of life.

Finally, it may be added that, whether conscious of it or not, she could not keep herself out of the great movement which was enabling women to share with men many of the incomparable advantages of University life, she had also her own conception of what University life might do for women, and by means of a College at Oxford for her own College at Cheltenham. For Cheltenham the connection would be of great value. Seeing all that might be won by a well-placed move, she planned that move, waited, then made it at the right moment. ‘I bewail your news,’ wrote an Oxford friend to whom she communicated the fact that St. Hilda’s was about to be opened, ‘and disclaim all responsibility for your mistake.’ Miss Beale opened her Hall and begged the students to accept the words Non frustra vixi as their motto, that being the thought which the ammonite at the feet of St. Hilda’s statue now suggested to her.

In October 1893 seven students took up their residence at St. Hilda’s. Mrs. Burrows, who had had a College boarding-house at Cheltenham, came to be head of the new Hall, assisted by her daughter, who had been a student at Lady Margaret Hall. The house was[238] formally but quietly opened on November 6 by the Bishop of the diocese, Dr. Stubbs, who placed himself at Miss Beale’s disposal for all arrangements. ‘I will keep,’ he wrote, ‘November 6 free for Miss Beale, but she must let me hear what, when, and how what is to be done’; and to Miss Beale, ‘You do not want me to bring robes on the 6th, do you? A line to reassure me would be grateful.’

On the occasion of the opening, after the little service conducted by the Dean of Winchester, the Bishop of Oxford spoke a few ‘grave and weighty words’ on the duty of ‘self-culture of the whole mind, soul, and spirit.’ The Dean, who thanked him for his address, said that ‘the new venture of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was by no means so ambitious as the Bishop seemed to think.’ He spoke of the way in which it might prepare women to be of real service in their generation, and added: ‘One cannot think of this opening day for the Oxford St. Hilda’s without strong emotions of gratitude and hope. This is the crown and highest result of all that work for women’s education which has been carried on under Miss Beale’s wise rule at Cheltenham these many years past; the College, with its varieties of activity, and its eight hundred students, justly claims to be represented here in the home of highest education.’

Photo. W. H. Rogers

S. Hilda’s Hall, Oxford.

Among the friends gathered for this opening ceremony was the founder of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, Canon Bellairs. He welcomed this house in Oxford, though he would have named it differently.

After five years, St. Hilda’s, Oxford, was recognised by the Association for the Education of Women in Oxford as St. Hilda’s Hall. Miss Beale finally, in 1900, connected it with St. Hilda’s, Cheltenham, by presenting it to the Association of that College.

That Miss Beale was fully alive to changes that must come in the course of time to such an institution as St. Hilda’s Hall, and could be content to see her own personal wishes set aside in everything that did not affect the essential life of the place, is clear from the following letter to Mrs. Wells in January 1903:—

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The year marked by this crown and result of labour was saddened by the death of Miss Catherine Newman at Mayfield House. It was a death which caused not only personal sorrow, but extreme perplexity and loss to all connected with the Mission. They found themselves at the end of four years’ trial of their scheme without a head, with a scattered band of workers, and an insanitary house. No one felt the sorrow of it all more than Miss Beale; no one was more courageous in meeting it. The necessary, difficult, and toilsome work which was the result of the crisis did not indeed fall to her share, but to that of some members of the committee on whom the responsibility specially pressed. But such difficulties to be met, such a death for a cause, were exactly what roused Miss Beale to feel the worth of it as she had never done before.

A small untiring sub-committee was formed, with Mrs. Batten as secretary, to re-arrange the work. The cost of efficient drainage operations was so heavy that at first it seemed better to seek a new house for the Settlement than to undertake such a great expense. A long search in the neighbourhood for such a house proved fruitless. It therefore became a question whether the Guild members should move their work from the place they had deliberately chosen at a large general meeting, or go to the expense required for making Mayfield House fit for habitation. However, an appeal to the surveyor resulted in the cost of the drainage work being thrown upon the landlord, who consequently made harder terms for his tenants. The question whether to stay or go came before the Guild in 1894, and a vote for continuing the work at Mayfield House was passed by a large majority. After an interval of some months the house was re-opened under a new[241] Lady Warden, Miss Corbett,—no Cheltenham worker having been found to undertake it.

In her first report Miss Corbett was able to show a full complement of workers. There was no falling off, but in less than two years it became evident that a more complete change must be made. The Oxford workers, who by a temporary arrangement lived at first in Mayfield House, had now a prosperous Settlement of their own—St. Margaret’s—in the very same square as Mayfield House. This Settlement of the Ladies’ Branch of the Oxford House could not well be in any other neighbourhood. It was seen to be ludicrous that two large communities of women workers should concentrate their energies on one small corner of the vast field of London work. Added to this, the high rent and rates of Mayfield House pointed to the need of a change, and at the Guild meeting of 1896 it was definitely proposed to move either to East Ham or Lambeth. Finally, however, Shoreditch was chosen, a district having sore needs, and near enough to Bethnal Green to enable those members of the Settlement engaged there in Board School management, charity organisation, and other extra parochial work still to carry it on.

Then came the question of a house. There was none. It was clearly necessary to build, but for so large an undertaking the reserve fund was insufficient. Miss Beale, always averse to begging for money, refused to make any definite appeal for charity, but as a happy inspiration, the idea came to her that the Guild should meet the difficulty with the same kind of means used by Mrs. Grey in starting high schools in 1874. This idea took shape in February 1897. Miss Verrall, who had been Treasurer of the Settlement from the beginning, sent out notices to members of the Guild to inquire[242] whether shares for £3000 would be taken up, and a ready response was given, all the shares being quickly appropriated within a fortnight. This, which seems to be a mere business transaction, was really a great deal more. It was rather a channel for interest and help which had been so far unable to force their way freely. The money was subscribed in the form of debenture stock at three per cent., repayable at the end of eighty years. £3800 was subscribed within a fortnight by 310 subscribers. A large part came from women to whom the sacrifice of control or recovery of the capital made it practically a gift. To most the yearly-paid few shillings of interest meant little in comparison with a few pounds available for immediate expenditure. Of the money subscribed, over £400 has now been released by gift from the holders. Other holders have authorised the Council of St. Hilda’s East to retain their interest. This brings in about £30 a year. The transaction was a fine example of Miss Beale’s use of this world’s goods, as means to great ends, and a fine instance of the response she could command from those she had led to her own point of view. Generous aid came also from Mr. Dutton, whose sister was an old Cheltonian,[65] and who undertook all the legal business gratuitously; also from the honorary architect, Mr. Philip Day, the husband of an old pupil, who volunteered his services for the new house. The workers found temporary quarters during the building, which took less than a year; and on April 26, 1898, the house was opened by Dr. Creighton, the Bishop of London, under the name of St. Hilda’s, Shoreditch. For Miss Beale remained faithful to the name and all the ideas it implied for her. On the letter[243] of a friend who wrote, ‘Could not the new house be called Cheltenham House or some such, binding it to the College? It would be better than a picturesque saint’—she wrote, ‘I disagree.’ Mrs. Reynolds, an old pupil, became head of the Settlement during the busy time of furnishing and organisation of work in a new centre. A year later she was succeeded by another old pupil, Miss Bruce, the present Lady Warden, who had worked in the Settlement from the first. Since that time the house has twice been enlarged. The growth of the Settlement, as its beginning had been, was marked by the loss through death of an enthusiastic worker when Mrs. Moyle, who was for a time its secretary, died in July 1899.

As the permanence of the Settlement became assured, and the interest of both past and present pupils increased, being augmented by the organisation of shares, and by the formation of St. Hilda’s Association, Miss Beale’s own interest in the work grew. She regarded St. Hilda’s East less as a centre of help for the poor than as a place of training for workers. In this aspect it appealed to her as rightly an integral part of the work of the College. In the year 1898, which she said might be called for the College an annus mirabilis, she was able to point to the three institutions bearing the name of St. Hilda, each firmly established, flourishing, and full of promise of future usefulness.

But the three great institutions bearing the name of St. Hilda by no means included all that thought-training work which was what Miss Beale specially associated with it.

The existence of St. Hilda’s College at Cheltenham made it convenient, if not imperative, to find exercise for the energy there inspired and directed, and to supply classes for practice. To keep this stream of energy within her own guidance for a longer period than the time of training involved, it was necessary to have scope for it at hand. Even the great and growing College was not large enough to employ all the workers it trained, and the Principal was ever alive to the necessity of having a certain number of teachers from outside, bringing with them fresh ideas and methods.

The Kindergarten was the first addition to the Ladies’ College proper to need such young helpers as Miss Beale now had at her disposal. It began, like Miss Beale’s other creations, without a local habitation of its own in 1876. The College, owing to the quick perception of its Lady Principal, who was sensitive to each fresh tendency in education, was one of the first schools in England to avail itself of the Kindergarten mistresses trained by Madame Michaelis, who began her work in her own house at Croydon as early as 1874.

Miss Beale at once secured a mistress, and on her arrival a number of little boys and girls were immediately found to constitute a Kindergarten in Miss Beale’s own drawing-room. ‘The’ drawing-room, as she always called it, did not well bear out its title. As a baby-class room it looked well. Morris’s daisy and columbine paper, then a new thing, was on the walls, to suggest the[245] thought, which was probably correct, that in first choosing it Miss Beale had already an intention of beginning a Kindergarten, though she did not find it advisable to mention it then to the Council. Some of the younger teachers in College helped a little with this baby-class. The system and organisation, the carefully trained head, all seemed rather alarming in those days when Froebelian ideas and German methods were little known in England.

As early as 1876 there were twenty-five children in the Kindergarten, for which a classroom had to be found in the College. In 1881 Miss Welldon came to Cheltenham as head of the Kindergarten. Hers was one of the first appointments made by the Croydon Kindergarten Company, which had been founded in 1876, with Madame Michaelis as Principal.

In 1882 the new room, purposely built and fitted for a Kindergarten, was opened. It was much enlarged in 1887. But soon again more scope was needed for the large number of students who now flocked to Cheltenham. Miss Beale could not bear to let one of these escape her. She recognised their needs, she saw their possible value. There were then very few places in England where they could be trained; the demand for Kindergarten mistresses daily increased. The immediate difficulty was met in 1889 by the establishment of a Kindergarten school in connection with St. Stephen’s Church in Cheltenham, supported by the vicar of the parish and a few voluntary contributors. This was staffed by Kindergarten students of the Ladies’ College. Fifty-seven children actually appeared in the school the first day, and the numbers rapidly increased in spite of the fact that each child paid twopence weekly. Five years later College students penetrated into a still poorer school at Naunton, a hamlet adjoining the town of Cheltenham. In 1896 the[246] infant school of the parish of Holy Trinity in the town invited teachers from the College.

In 1889 Cambray House was offered for sale. Miss Beale, who had a strong lingering affection for this first home of her school, had with regret seen it ‘alienated to barbarian boys,’ the trees cut down, and the garden turned into an asphalted playground. The building was well fitted for the school purposes for which it had been adapted and long used. There was enough space in the part which had not been altered, and which was not wanted for a day-school, to be utilised as a boarding-house. Miss Beale seized the chance she saw of opening a school which should serve the double purpose of taking overflow pupils or others for whom, for many reasons, the Ladies’ College was not suited, and of affording an opening under her own eye for some of the teachers she was training. The rules for admission, discipline, etc., were identical with those of the College. By this time, too, she saw the use of the racquet-courts and tennis-grounds. It was a great satisfaction to get back this house. She wrote of it to Miss Arnold:—

In 1895 Cambray was enlarged at a cost of about £2000, and in October 1897 Miss Beale, by deed of gift, made over the property to the Ladies’ College, though it was arranged that she should still continue[247] there the school and boarding-house. Miss Beale marked this return of Cambray House, ‘enlarged and alive again with girls,’ into the possession of the College, as another notable event of the annus mirabilis.

Cambray House, on its acquisition by the College through the gift of Miss Beale, was leased to her for a nominal rent; the school and boarding-house being carried on as a private venture until 1906, when their existence was recognised in the College prospectus for the first time. Miss Beale spent another £2000 out of her own income upon additions and improvements after she had made over the house to the College. This was a large sum, but even from a financial point of view by no means wasted. In five years the profits of school and boarding-house amounted to £1000, for which Miss Beale planned further fruitful use.

Cambray School, or, to give it its true title, Cheltenham Ladies’ College School, and Cambray boarding-house, which took pupils belonging to both the new school and the College, was not the only undertaking for which Miss Beale made herself personally responsible. She also started, and placed in a good financial position, two cheap boarding-houses, St. Helen’s and St. Austin’s, and in course of time presented them to the College. Her position in regard to all these institutions was surely very unusual, not to say unique. The foundation of a school of over one hundred pupils, and of houses containing the same number of boarders, would be a respectable life’s work for many a woman. This work appears to have been only one of the many occupations Miss Beale found for the little leisure left her by the cares of the great College and its ever-multiplying interests.

It was perhaps primarily interest in young teachers which led Miss Beale to join a movement made in 1897[248] to induce ladies to take up work in elementary schools. Miss Beale was present at a large meeting held that year in Westminster Town Hall, when the need and importance of this work were set forth in speeches by the Bishop of Stepney,[66] Sir Joshua Fitch, and others. As a result a Government Training Department was at once formed at the Ladies’ College, and work began with seven students, who in the same year were encouraged by addresses from Sir H. E. Oakeley, H.M.I., and Sir Joshua Fitch. The field of practice for these students was found in All Saints’ Schools, where there were four departments all supplied with the best apparatus. Other schools in the town were also glad at different times to receive these teachers. Miss Beale became much interested in the work, and proposed to build a practising school of her own for the elementary department of the College, engaged a head-mistress, and bought land for building. Then in 1901 came the regulations for local education committees, which would have put Miss Beale’s school under local control. She therefore gave up the idea of building and sold her land. Later regulations made her find it impossible to continue the elementary work on the lines she wished. The Government demands proved a fetter to one who felt she should be free to work towards her ideal. To her mind the real progress of elementary education in the country depended, not on the ‘introduction of new subjects of instruction, which must impose new and burdensome labour on teachers and children. It should be gained by the better training of teachers, by the adoption of better methods, by a wiser economy of time, and by showing teachers how to put more knowledge, more skill, more thought, more love, and more enthusiasm[249] into their work.’ The legislation of 1901 made her feel that ‘My Lords’ did not recognise these principles as all-important; that they undervalued such an effort as she was making at Cheltenham; that they were unjust to voluntary schools. She felt as if she were playing an unfair game, and declined any longer to help forward a movement of which she could not see the goal. It may be marked also that she could never feel full sympathy for free education. From this time she again limited herself to training secondary teachers. Conditions which made elementary training the one serious work which Miss Beale took up only to abandon it, are indeed to be regretted. The magnificent plant, the fine opportunities for learning and practising, such as the Ladies’ College could supply, above all the large-minded teaching, the sense of real education which the Lady Principal would give, were thus lost to a cause which affects the wellbeing of the whole nation.

The Secondary Training Department became a recognised division of the College in 1885. So high a value did Miss Beale put upon this that she wrote of the work of the mistress in whose charge it was, as ‘only second in importance to that of the Head.’

St. Hilda’s work, using the term which Miss Beale herself would have used, meant much more than teaching definite subjects and preparing for examinations: it meant inspiration and the leading out of minds. It demanded unlimited devotion to a cause. It is probable that Miss Beale had for long cherished, and had only gradually relinquished a hope, though she never formed any definite plan, of seeing arise out of her work for education a body of women willing to form a teaching order. Opposed to sisterhood schools as she was, chiefly because her ideal of education was so high and apart,[250] that she could not bear to see it receive in any way a secondary place, she recognised the immense value that some kind of rule would have, if voluntarily imposed for the sake of education. In other words, while she did not like to see people taking up teachers’ work because they were Sisters, she would have liked to see those she inspired and trained voluntarily take upon themselves some of the restrictions of a Sister’s life because they were teachers. The thought may have come to her first when, in 1856 and 1858, Mrs. Lancaster pressed her to undertake penitentiary work under rule. It was this which led to the severity of her dress and grave demeanour at Casterton, this which was echoed in a half-expressed wish that her staff at Cheltenham should wear black. When, after long years of waiting, it became her part to train women for the work of education, the aim of inducing them to adopt a separate devoted life, with or without visible signs of it, was ever before her.

Now that St. Hilda’s work may be witnessed in the three great institutions bearing this name, it is of no common interest to trace Miss Beale’s own plan for its development. The plan itself and the noble ideal behind it are not more remarkable than the ability with which she waited, resigned her individual fancy, and became an agent rather than an author. The following extract (circa 1884) states her first design:—

In this connection it is interesting to read this extract from a letter written to a teacher who was unsettled as to her vocation, and was contemplating entering a sisterhood:—

Among the women whose saintly lives were a source of inspiration to Dorothea Beale, there was one whose acquaintance (so to speak) she did not make until herself in mature life. None the less did the name of Mary Astell become a thought of encouragement and hope to one whose heart was ever fresh. When in 1890, after various unsuccessful experiments, a properly managed house was opened for the regular teachers in the College, Miss Beale named it Astell House, after the lady who, in the reign of Anne, put forth ‘a plan of a College for the higher education of woman, which should be at the same time a religious house. The ladies were to spend some time in study as well as prayer, Mrs. Astell holding that they had as much right as men to improve their minds.... Their special work was to be the education of girls of the higher class, and also, if their means would admit, of the daughters of poor gentlemen, who must otherwise remain untaught.... Mrs. Astell’s scheme aroused considerable interest, and an unnamed lady (supposed to be the Queen) was ready to give £10,000 for the foundation of such an institution; but Bishop Burnet, who seems to have been consulted in the matter, put an end to the plan, saying it would be too much like a nunnery.’ Miss Beale certainly wanted a nunnery no more than did the timorous Bishop. As time went on she cared less for the outward shape the spirit she strove to foster might adopt; but she grew more and more earnest and active in seeking to influence young teachers[253] to become serious and high-minded and self-sacrificing. The Quiet Days, which were instituted chiefly to this end, affected many wholly outside the College. They are therefore better mentioned in connection with those other interests which, to borrow her own nomenclature in the Magazine, may be included under the title of ‘Parerga.’

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CHAPTER XII
TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL

A true history of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College would not be merely a faithful record of dated events, of building, enlargement, expansion, of the introduction of examinations, of distinctions gained; it must also suggest, if only in outline, the working of the spirit which informed the whole, that by which it grew and became, in spite of its size and the different elements it embraced, homogeneous in itself and full of force.

Photo. G. H. Martyn & Sons.

Ladies’ College and Garden 1908.

That she was but one worker among many, that she was only part of an ‘order’ which must be temporary, were facts ever before Miss Beale’s eyes. Those who remember their school-days at Cheltenham with love and gratitude think not only of the Principal, but of many others, some of whom passed out of sight before her, some of whom are still faithfully carrying out the ideas she inspired, but whose influence, like her own, left an abiding impression. One spirit, one aim, an equal strenuous effort were what she strove before all things to gain for her fellow-labourers, and did undoubtedly to a marvellous extent produce throughout the College. Though Miss Beale did occasionally make mistakes in her choice of workers, expecting too much, or perhaps taking too much for granted, this was very rarely the[255] case where class-teachers were concerned. These, who had the responsibility of forming character as well as of giving instruction, were always teachers whom she thoroughly knew and trusted, and had generally trained herself. By these, the thought and inspiration of the Head were handed on. But beyond this, all who passed through the College, even if they did not have the opportunity of knowing Miss Beale personally, came in contact with her in one way or another. Even the youngest heard her Scripture lessons; all the pupils in Division I. had their marks read by her, and thus came individually before her. Those who were confirmed while at school were brought into closer touch with her, and many through some incident in their school career, or through peculiar circumstances of home life, learned to know her as a friend. The highest class in College, and the pupils who were hopefully named B.A.’s, saw a good deal of her even to the end. And from first to last in her long headship, it was possible for any child, big or little, in any part of the College, to know the Principal,—by herself taking notice of her. Miss Beale’s fastidious honesty, which led her to dread even the least appearance of stealing hearts away from home, largely held her back from making personal friends among the girls still at College. ‘Yearned to be loved,’ she wrote once in her diary; but consistently brought to her work a special gift of self-sacrifice in never seeking affection for herself personally. She had, moreover, a horror of the unhealthy attachments which are often a source of danger in girls’ schools. In this connection may be read one of her many letters to Miss Clara Arnold:[67]—

Miss Beale’s own shyness also stood in the way of her personal intimacy with her pupils. She liked to be met more than half-way. She liked the birthday-book brought to her to sign,[68] the rare wild-flower found[257] and gathered for her, the little note of sympathy or inquiry or thanks. A hundred reasons would keep most girls back from taking the simple steps which would have led them early to find a friend in Miss Beale. While they were reverencing in silence and at a distance there would come along some bright thing of quick perception, accustomed to society and to be welcome everywhere, untroubled by self-consciousness, who would approach the throne with no ‘unaccustomed awe,’ but stand, and chat, and smile, and be obviously acceptable to the lonely sovereign. ‘You know, A.,’ she said once to an old girl, ‘it was your freedom from shyness with me that first drew me to you.’ And, as a matter of fact, Miss Beale was really the most accessible of sovereigns. She longed to know all her children, and to help each personally. It was only a girl whose career was very short or wholly uneventful, and led in the lower classes of the school, who could remain wholly unacquainted with her. Even then, it would be found that the ten minutes’ individual talk which the Principal had with each as she left the College finally, impressed itself on the mind of the hearer. Her sympathies were ever most readily drawn out by those likely in after years to exercise influence—in some prominent, possibly Imperial position, or as teachers.

At all times a silent, strong, unconscious impression was produced upon most by Miss Beale’s rare absence from her post, her minute attention to her own share of the work of the College, her obvious self-devotion. ‘I can’t picture the College without her, she always seemed to be everywhere,’ one wrote after her death. Another said, ‘Although she might never speak to you, still the fact that she was not there on any day always made the College feel strange and empty.’

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Her memory for all who had passed through the College was simply extraordinary. A married pupil, visiting Cheltenham after many years’ interval, writes of her amazement at finding that Miss Beale could tell her of every girl she had been with in class, and in many cases by whom she had sat, whom she had liked, and so on. Another, who was for two years at the College, only spoke twice to the Principal during that period, and left without the least idea that Miss Beale could know her as an individual. Two years after leaving the first great sorrow of her life came, in the death of her class-teacher, Miss Aitken. ‘That friendship,’ she writes, ‘had never degenerated into any foolish or selfish attachment. I still count it as one of the strongest motives of my life.’ In the deep grief over her friend’s death came a letter from Miss Beale: ‘Just the fact that she remembered and understood was like a revelation. It was through that that I first realised the possibility of the individual love and care of God.’

Naturally, it was in the earliest days, when the first class was small and Miss Beale taught many subjects herself, that an intimate tie between the head and the pupil was most easily formed. But Miss Beale’s wonderful freshness of mind and heart enabled her to continue not only the old friendships so made, but yearly to make new ones. She had a wonderful way, too, of maintaining friendship. A girl might pass through the school knowing her but a little, but loyalty to College fostered by the Guild meetings would each year bring her into closer touch with the Principal. ‘I hope we may meet again,’ she wrote in 1876 to one who had had a deep love and reverence for her, but not much more than a slight acquaintance with her in College. Twenty years after, when events drew them together again, a close[259] mutual friendship which greatly brightened Miss Beale’s declining years grew out of the seed sown so long before.

Miss Beale herself held that the influence of the Principal on the school should be through the teachers. ‘She can do more with five hundred if she has a staff thoroughly in sympathy with her than if she brought direct personal influence to bear upon a school of a hundred. “If you want a thing done, do not do it yourself,” should be the motto of a ruler for everyday use. Act through others, educate them thereby to independence, and reserve your strength for things that none but a Head can do.’

In teaching, Miss Beale’s definite aim was to inspire. She sought but little to inform, but much to kindle a thirst for knowledge, a love of good and beautiful things, and to awaken thinking power. This she undoubtedly did, though the process was slow; working itself out quietly in the mind and character of those she taught, in nobler views of life, more refined appreciations, improved sense of proportion. When there was a question of preparation for examination, or of the definite knowledge such as was required in mathematical subjects, it was necessary to supplement the lessons of the Principal. Yet her teaching of the exact sciences was hardly less illuminative than of those which make a more direct appeal to the imagination. She would interest the class in a mathematical problem, induce the mind to work, leave it at the end of a lesson impressed and roused, but at the same time not clear about the subject she had been putting before it. Then afterwards the explanation up to which she had been leading would often come like a flash to the puzzling brain.

Naturally the teaching of history was a great opportunity[260] to one who could so clothe her subject with life. In this she was more than merely picturesque and vivid, she would allow her own delighted interest to show itself. Who that heard them could forget her lectures on the reign of George the Third, in which she and her whole class were transported to the old Parliament House, listening, it might be, to the younger Pitt’s maiden speech, or to some stirring debate between him and his rival, hearing the applause, the dissentient murmurs, even a joke under the breath of some listener? She would lead up to a climax with dramatic force. With what astonishment did her audience hear, as if it were a startling piece of political news of their own day, of the Coalition Ministry![69]

The study of history has now become organised and scientific. Miss Beale’s own methods were out of date long before her death; she ceased indeed to teach the subject herself about 1874, but she never lost the enthusiasm with which she first entered upon it. As an example she was always anxious that those who were lecturing on history should adopt the views she considered just about certain personages. Once, when the Tudor period was being studied in the College, she summoned the teachers, as the school hours ended at one o’clock, into a classroom to hear what she believed to be the truth about Cranmer—with a few words making a terrible picture of time-serving and cowardice. On the other hand, she was always anxious that what was great in Elizabeth should be recognised; that every possible excuse should be made for her faults.

But if Miss Beale’s methods of teaching history have been to some extent superseded, it should be remembered[261] that she was among the first to insist on the importance of general history. Though assured of the value of detailed and special knowledge, she was not content to let one period stand alone unlinked with its context. She would not cut off the history of England as a thing by itself, but showed its place in the stream of time, in the lives of the nations. So almost every class was obliged to learn something of outline and general history, and here it was that the Chart and Textbook played so important a part.

Miss Beale’s English literature lessons may, more than any others she gave, be described as sui generis. ‘Miss Beale gives literature lessons of a peculiar kind,’ was the appreciation of a new pupil who had studied the subject before coming to Cheltenham. Her literature lesson, indeed, had many functions. The subject became the vehicle of much teaching that it was not convenient to give in a Bible lesson. She sought to interest her class in books, in reading, in noble thoughts, in fine prose and poetry. But this was by no means all. She sought primarily to give views of life, conduct, and character such as would enable her hearers to go from school into a larger world, already prepared to know what to find. Under the names of friend and friendship much was said which might apply equally to the choice of a husband and to marriage. Knowledge of character, she would often say, is so important for women. Hence she liked, if possible, once a year to read and lecture upon one of Shakspere’s great plays to the first class. Though ever fresh and interesting, and herself as interested as ever in these readings, though the lectures were constantly brightened and enriched by new books and thoughts brought to bear upon them, there was very little variation in the treatment of the main theme. At[262] certain crises in the story, over certain characters, hearers of long standing knew what to expect. Ophelia, to take an instance, was for all the generations of girls who read Hamlet at Cheltenham the woman who failed a man because she could not dare to be true. A matter like this was vital to Miss Beale. Could any class-teacher in the College have represented Ophelia in any other light, the Lady Principal would have spared no pains to point out the error of the treatment, both to her and to those she had misled. Desdemona, again, was always marked as the wife who not unnaturally roused the suspicions of a jealous-minded husband, because he knew that in marrying him she had deceived her father. The misery that may follow a secret wilful marriage was always hinted at when this story was told.

But there were other and less weighty considerations than influence and marriage in these lectures. They supplied opportunity for suggestions on simple affairs such as the choice of books, ways of spending time and money, manners, conversation, and the like. Often questions of the day, politics in a very general sense, and social problems were led up to.

Miss Beale might be unacademic to a fault in these lectures, but she had that power of inspiration which made every poem she prized, every character she admired, live immortally for those who heard her speak of them. The actual reading—specially of poetry—was a delight to both reader and hearers. Miss Beale had a strong dramatic instinct, a keen enjoyment of poetry and the right use of words. She had also a wonderful voice, which she managed well, and though always quiet and restrained in manner carried her audience with her unweariedly. The literature lesson was long, specially in the early days when, owing to[263] short distances and small numbers, no time was occupied by arrangements for prayers. For thirty or forty minutes corrected notes were returned and criticised, then the lecture proper would begin and go on for a full hour. Sometimes the whole time, an hour and a half, was taken up by the lecture. It was certainly very unusual for any one to find it too long.

A further interest in these lectures lay in an effort to make them language lessons. As a matter of fact, though much interested in language herself, Miss Beale did little more than inspire a wish to study it further. Perhaps this was her aim in touching upon it at all. She would often bring to her lesson a table of Grimm’s Law, explain it very rapidly, and appear to expect that it should be as rapidly remembered.

Miss Beale’s literature was by no means confined to Shakspere’s plays. All the greatest and many lesser works in the English tongue were taken in their turn. But she would seldom take the works of any whose thought seemed to her inferior; would have little, for instance, to do with Dryden and Pope. Style in itself had no attraction, and the growth of literary form, unless accompanied by the development of noble thought, was of little interest. No subject, perhaps, was more after her own choice than the poems of Spenser. She would dwell with unfailing delight on the complicated allegories of the Faëry Queene, or on the Hymns to ‘Heavenly Love’ and ‘Heavenly Beauty.’ Nor was a school year ever allowed to pass without her introducing the higher classes in the College to some of Browning’s works. How many must have learned to know his greater short poems by hearing her read them.[70]

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But the subject with which the name of Dorothea Beale as a teacher will ever be associated is that of Holy Scripture. For this her greatest force was reserved. This was the soul of her work, as any who listened to her lessons with a hearing ear, or who marked the deep reverence prevailing in her class, could not fail to observe. Trammelled she was in many ways, at first by the narrowness which had almost prevented her coming to Cheltenham; increasingly, as time went on, by the numbers of her hearers who held opposing views on religion or who had no views at all; much always by her own dread of ‘offending’ or of hindering an earnest seeker for truth by a positive assertion. These causes made it inevitable that her teaching should seem to many vague or insufficient, since she could not bear to miss putting herself beside those who were as babes, unable to venture a step into the untried. An old pupil has well described this attitude:—

Certainly in the weekly lesson to the whole First Division of the school she did a great deal more. Another old pupil may be quoted here:—

If, in order to seek some erring spirit, Miss Beale did at times seem to neglect others, it must be remembered that in teaching the Bible, more than at any other time, she really took up the humble position of simply bringing her hearers to think and listen for themselves. This was the intention which lay below the reverent behaviour exacted from a Scripture class. By means of this she strove to impress the importance to the hearer of being still, ready, attentive, free from selfish or idle thought. She prepared not only the lesson, but also herself to give it, with a devotion and self-denial which she never allowed to become relaxed by pressing business, age, or infirmity.

Not only was Friday evening strictly kept for the final preparation of the lesson, but the ordinary details of school business attended to before prayers were put aside on the day it was given. No one in the College would have thought on those days of speaking to Miss Beale beforehand except on some urgent matter. Writing to a young teacher in 1880, she said: ‘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.’

This earnestness and diligence were shared by many of the class-teachers. In a short account of Miss Belcher, which appeared in the College Magazine of 1898, Miss[266] Beale said: ‘Only those who knew her intimately were aware of the long study and extreme pains she took with her Scripture lessons. Every Friday at Cheltenham we used to meet and go over the Saturday lesson together.’

The annual midsummer examination was no mere test of knowledge gained, but, like the weekly notes, a real exercise of thought. In this matter Miss Beale received the full sympathy and co-operation of the Rev. E. Worsley, who for many years examined the upper classes of the College in Scripture.[71]

The subject of Miss Beale’s Scripture lessons was generally a Gospel or an Epistle. Occasionally she would take the book of Genesis, from which she would draw much instruction on Sin, Freewill, Faith. Perhaps her favourite subject was the Gospel of St. John. Remembering the Saturday class, the awe with which she would speak of the Logos, or with passionate devotion follow the sublime teaching of the later chapters of that book, the glowing ardour with which she would heap up fact and proof concerning the Resurrection, occur at once to the memory.

Letters to old pupils who had become teachers in other schools show Miss Beale’s reasons for dwelling on certain points. To Miss Wolseley Lewis, head-mistress of the Graham Street Church High School, she wrote in 1897 concerning 1 Cor. vii.:—

And again in January 1898 on the same subject:—

To Miss Arnold at Truro she wrote:—

And again, in 1891, on the use of Scripture teaching:—

The immense detail of the teaching, following as it did the innumerable suggestions that one text might give, was sometimes confusing to a new class. A term’s lessons might be occupied with a few verses only. Then[268] there is no doubt that Miss Beale’s large way of thinking and comprehensive form of expression was difficult to follow. This did not lessen with age. New pupils, particularly of late years, were often filled with despair at the prospect of having to write out the lessons. Many felt the Sunday work it involved to be a strain. This was less the case at first, when perhaps intellectual interests had more undisputed sway. The life in College, as in other spheres, has become more full and offers fewer spaces for uninterrupted thought. Sometimes a whisper that her Scripture lessons were too difficult reached the Lady Principal. It grieved her, but she never quite believed it. She wrote of it to Miss Arnold:—

The patient correction and explanation of the pupils’ essays on the lessons was not the least part of the Scripture work. How full, elaborate, and diligent this correction was will not readily be understood by any who do not know the Cheltenham system. But though Miss Beale wrote a great deal in the girls’ books, her corrections were often framed on the Socratic method so much prized by her. To take an example. A vague use of the word infinitely has written against it, ‘Do you mean from eternity?’ ‘The universe,’ writes one pupil lightly, to have the word underlined and with ‘Meaning’ written above it. And she had a wonderful eye for thought[269] and effort. No writer, however poor, whose work showed signs of these was discouraged. One writes of this:—

A good deal of enthusiastic drudgery was needed for the corrector of twenty or thirty Scripture books every week. Even Miss Beale found it hard at times, and would write:—

And:—

In dealing with individual character, faults, and weakness Miss Beale showed no common tact, and often surpassing astuteness. To begin with, she was herself so well disciplined, so well attuned to the highest thought of work for others, that probably she did not even feel irritated by the errors and mistakes of her children. Certainly she never showed annoyance. It is impossible even to think of her being satirical or sarcastic either in teaching or in dealing with faults of manner or character. She would have considered it unpardonable in an under-teacher to be so, almost as reprehensible as to treat or speak of a child as stupid. She had indeed a special love for ‘ugly ducklings,’ in whom she would frequently perceive and draw out a latent swanhood.

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Some things—such as what she termed the ‘petty larceny of her time’ by those who prolonged an interview by aimless small talk—did irritate her; but she would no more have been annoyed by the shortcomings of a child than a doctor would be at the illness of a patient. Though able to adapt herself spontaneously to individual characteristics, she had certain distinct lines along which she worked. Dealing with ordinary childish faults she would make no appeal on high religious grounds, used no set or stock phrases. Always, in big and little things, she would show the child some ground for expecting right action from her, pointing out something probably connected with her home which, a legitimate source of satisfaction, should be also a spur to do well. Or she would treat a rebellious act in such a way as to rob it of all its delight. An amusing instance of this was told by a writer in the Guardian of November 21, 1906: ‘On one occasion a very clever student, with an unruly temper, refused, because some one had annoyed her, to eat her breakfast on the day of an important examination. Her form mistress begged Miss Beale to persuade the girl to have at least some milk. She was sent to Miss Beale, and was greatly startled by—“I hear you are fasting to-day; for a temper like yours it is probably a wise discipline.” Nothing more was said, but the girl did not refuse her luncheon.’ Such homœopathic treatment was sometimes also applied to idleness, a rare fault in a schoolgirl. It was, in ancient days, occasionally known in the Third Division at Cheltenham. Quite rarely, in consequence, a little girl would be allowed to do nothing but sit still all the morning. No one had a chance of showing obstinacy. It was a relief to more than one young teacher to be told that ‘You must never let a child have the satisfaction of holding out against[271] you.’ If such a thing did occur, there was no contest, no opposition of superior power on the part of a teacher; a few, very few words from the Lady Principal would make the child see the futility and silliness of her attitude.

A moral delinquency was, however, met with the very greatest seriousness. Parents were sometimes surprised at the extraordinary pains Miss Beale would take to obtain the confession of such a fault as copying a lesson. The slightest suspicion of dishonesty was always followed up at once, but the act was never brought home to the offender until there was positive proof. Then the way would be made easy for her, the lie prevented by something like this: ‘My child, I am sure you have too good a conscience to rest with such a thing as this upon it.’ Conviction and confession of a fault made it immediately possible to show how it came about, how it might be prevented in the future. Especially in the matter of untruthfulness Miss Beale would trace the outside fault to its source, showing it to be a symptom of some corrupting force within, cowardice, vanity, or idleness. In this connection it is well worth while to read her remarkable little paper on Truth.[72]

One tale of her discrimination may well be told. A class-teacher received some anonymous letters which she took to Miss Beale, naming the girl she took to be the writer. Some days passed. The teacher thought the matter forgotten, when one morning Miss Beale said to her, ‘Send —— to me. I can see by her face this morning that she will tell me all.’ Miss Beale was not disappointed either in the confession or its effects.

No one could reprove like Miss Beale. Her grief, her admonition were expressed not only with so much sympathy, but with such an absolute impersonal sense of[272] rightness and justice, that it was impossible to resent them. ‘Nothing is more touching,’ she wrote in 1898, ‘than the penitence of children, when they find that we have seen the good which is hidden, and not only the evil that comes forth; that we know, not only what is done, but what is resisted.’[73] Any who had so failed became a special care. ‘We try,’ she wrote once, ‘to make her feel there is no anger at all, but sympathy and an anxious watchfulness which will, we hope, make her more watchful over herself.’

To break the rule of silence was always regarded as a great fault. A careless pupil, conscious of breaking it only once or twice, would be surprised to find in her term’s report, ‘Disobedient to rule.’

A girl whose influence was seen to be a source of evil—a single act or conversation might be enough to prove it—was instantly removed. Careful as Miss Beale was to let no pupil go who might by any possibility be induced to stay, she never hesitated a moment in a case of this kind. The extreme seriousness with which she regarded this may be gathered from the following letter to a head-mistress:—

Such instances are stated, not because it was continually the part of the Principal and her staff to deal with iniquity. On the contrary, the order and conduct of the school were singularly good,—the sense of duty, fostered by a call to exercise it rather than by precept, was unusually high. One means by which this was maintained was the constant collaboration of the parents. In all matters Miss Beale tried to take them with her, encouraged them to come to her, to talk over the children, spoke to the children about them, wrote to them on special matters, tried to get them to understand her aims. Her letters, too, show what pains she took to bring about a real co-operation. On one occasion no less than ten letters passed between Principal, parent, and class-teacher on so simple a matter as a child returning in the afternoon, according to a school rule, to do a lesson over again. Miss Beale won the child to see and do what was right, but she also wrote to the mother:—

One letter to a parent on a matter of the same kind ended with this postscript: ‘Sometimes we cannot, and sometimes we ought not, to keep a promise made under a wrong impression. Consider Herod’s case.’

Parents who did not send their children back on the right day, or who kept them at home for insufficient[274] reason, always heard from her. She would write thus:

‘Had I known how difficult it would be for —— to return, I should have advised her remaining here for her holiday’; or, ‘I know things are not considered so serious at a girls’ school as at a boys’ school, but no boy would be received back, I am sure, at one of our great public schools who had been absent without the leave of the Head-master.’

On the other hand, Miss Beale was always most anxious to support the authority and dignity of the parent. Once, when this seemed not to have been done by a teacher, she wrote: ‘She saw when I pointed it out how very wrong it was even to hint to a child that I thought her mother in the wrong.’ ‘She was never tired,’ ran a notice by an old pupil after her death, ‘of impressing upon the girls that home must come first in their affections. It was indeed pathetic to hear her speak, as she did almost weekly in her addresses to the assembled divisions, of the beauty of the relation of a child to its parents.’

It is impossible to do more than refer to the many letters which show the confidence and gratitude of the College parents, but, as an example, one from a father who held high official rank, on his daughter’s passing an examination in 1877, may be quoted, with its good wishes which were so entirely realised:—

Lastly and supremely, it was through Miss Beale’s own personal influence upon her teachers, her clearly defined example always before them, that the spirit of the College came to be what it was. She had the gift of inspiration in that rare degree which makes actual direction of less value. She did not neglect details; she would indicate minor matters deserving of attention which others would overlook; she often quoted at a teachers’ meeting the example of the great general who, on taking over a command, first paid attention to the boots of his men. But it was never necessary for her to harp upon little things, or to go personally to see if her wishes had been carried out. One, who had had some years’ experience in teaching before she arrived at Cheltenham as a student, spoke with something like rapture of the College organisation as it appeared to her coming fresh from other places of education.

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This influence was not gained through the more ordinary ways of intimacy. In one sense Miss Beale saw very little of her teachers, some, as the staff became very large, she hardly knew at all, though naturally with a few of the older ones she became more really intimate. There were also a few special instances of close friendship. Notably may be mentioned that of Miss Martha Brown, who came to Cheltenham about 1873, no longer young or strong. Her actual work in the College lasted but a short time, for her health soon failed altogether, though a keen mind, occupied and interested by a true love of knowledge and desire to impart it, kept her up for a year or so, until she was forced to resign herself to her last illness. For more than a year she remained in Miss Beale’s house, Miss Beale herself sometimes sharing with Miss Gore the task of nursing and caring for her in every way, holding it, indeed, a privilege to wait upon one whose spirit so soared above her circumstances,—she was poor as well as hopelessly ill,—one who, regarding the mysteries of science as a lesson-book given to man by God, did not weary in her study of them even when near the gates of death. Miss Brown is often mentioned in Miss Beale’s diary, and later her name occurs frequently among those who had passed beyond the veil, and whom Miss Beale specially loved to honour at a Guild meeting.

With regard to the greater number of the staff, though it is to be feared that her dislike of spending trifling sums of money stood in the way of even small hospitalities, this can have been but a secondary reason why she did not see more of them. It was a principle with her to spend time on recreation only so far as would help work; it was a principle to use the short interviews which alone were possible among large[277] numbers in the most economical way; finally, it was a principle that influence may be stronger and better for detachment from everyday occasions. To spend time on small talk would only fritter away good influence. Yet, in thinking of this, there must occur to the memory of some, at least, that she had a kind of dread of the word influence, as implying something personal, that she thought it dangerous to try to establish a sphere of influence, that she never consciously tried to acquire it. Once when a petition was put forward against the suffrage for women, Miss Beale, who declined to sign it, said that one reason urged upon her for doing so seemed so poor, namely, that the vote would impair the influence of women with men.

One aim, a common self-devotion in all was what she desired. To further it meetings of the staff were constantly held, when she would speak serious words which would burn themselves into the soul of many a young teacher. Her intense earnestness impressed, her tremendous claim was irresistible. Nothing for self! all for those committed to your care,—your whole life arranged so as best to further your work! This was the claim she made, and to this she found response. Individually she helped much by a quiet word now and then, by a little unexpected note, sometimes by a long letter. One young teacher, who was apt to become excited in the enjoyment of her work, was surprised one morning to receive in the midst of it a little note, which, when deciphered, ran, ‘My dear child, try to work quietly. We must not let good feeling go off in steam.’ Those who were long at Cheltenham could tell of many such instances of watchful kindness; letters to those who left to work elsewhere are full of it. She had a wonderfully keen perception for reality of intention and[278] earnestness in work, and was quick to encourage any who showed these qualities. One who was long on the staff at Cheltenham has written thus of the help she received from the Principal when she first went:—

When it was necessary to find fault or alter an arrangement Miss Beale never shrank from doing what she believed to be for the good of the whole, even at the cost of personal convenience. But she was always careful not to reprove except in such a way as to leave an absolute sense of justice. There was no sting in her rebuke. And she could own herself wrong. She had no foolish fear about giving herself away. One member of the staff could tell of long and repeated application for an arrangement which she knew to be right, but which Miss Beale absolutely and bluntly refused. At last it was granted. Miss Beale herself came and stood patiently watching the removal of desks, etc., involved. It took at least an hour. When she had seen it finished, she said: ‘I see you were right in insisting on this.’ ‘She has given in, and I could die for her!’ exclaimed the teacher, as she reported the incident to another concerned in it.

It has often been said that the College teachers were overworked. It would be truer, perhaps, to state that too many chose to overwork, and that it was easy to[279] do so. Miss Beale, who taught, read, wrote so much, interviewed people, conducted any amount of College business, and yet found time to write upon Browning or the Fourth Dimension, was unable rightly to estimate how little a young woman of average intelligence can do. She had to learn it by actual experience of cases, and she tried to learn it. She was always anxious to readjust a burden, took infinite trouble to do so, but did not always realise the weakness of many a willing horse, or the want of common-sense, which will make people heap up tasks or work without plan. She never wanted to play herself, could not understand that any one should seriously wish to do so; she therefore regarded such a thing as the teachers’ tennis-ground as quite superfluous.[74] Nor could she understand why any should wish to live out of sight of the place of their work. Even in the summer holidays she frequently chose the Sanatorium for a residence. Her own house was gradually absorbed by the College buildings, until it became almost as shut from the outer world as the women’s apartments in an oriental establishment, with no proper air and light of its own, only such as was derived from the surrounding corridors of the beloved College. Miss Beale preferred it should be so. Yet this attitude was but the defect of the great qualities by which she was enabled to make a complete self-surrender, and to call upon others to do the same ‘for the work’s sake.’ The only teachers who really felt ill-used or misunderstood, and who perhaps had some genuine ground for their complaint, were those who were unwilling to take trouble over fresh methods and subjects, or who were unable to rise to the high standard put before them, innocently thinking that the profession of a school-mistress[280] was just an interesting occupation, or a means of earning a livelihood. Yet the practical side had its place. It was to Miss Beale’s foresight and initiative that the Pension Fund was in the first instance due.

Miss Beale’s letters to Miss Clara Arnold, with whom she had a close correspondence from the time Miss Arnold left the College to become a teacher until her death in March 1906, show at once her ideal, and her close individual care for her own child. Some of the most interesting are quoted here:—

To one who wrote that she found the character of the county in which her school was placed ‘detestable.’

Many letters to young teachers dealt with the care of health, which was always impressed as a sacred duty upon girls and teachers alike. Body and mind should be kept fit for duty. Hence social engagements which would make it imperative to sit up late at night should be cut off as far as possible. Holidays should be spent in such a way as to gain complete freshness and rest and where there was no risk of infection, not even of taking cold.

Here is one to Miss Arnold:—

Again, a month later she wrote:—

Here is a letter to another head-mistress:—

Miss Beale could also enter into the feelings of exhaustion and depression which follow some special trial connected with work. But the sympathy she showed[283] was ever bracing, as may be seen in the following extracts from letters:—

There were many teachers who heard from Miss Beale just at the moment when they seemed to need help. A few words of encouragement would come at such times as the beginning of new work. To one she wrote always for the opening day of the term. Two such letters follow:—

The College was not an easy place to leave. Miss Beale was proud of the number of head-mistresses she sent out, but she grudged parting with her best teachers. And there were many who, like Miss Belcher,[76] sacrificed their own interests to that of the College.

The following is a characteristic letter on the subject:—

But when Miss Wolseley Lewis went to Graham Street, she wrote to her:—

‘I have known her,’ wrote a head-mistress after the death of Miss Beale, ‘for thirty-six years now, and she has been the truest and most valued of friends to me. How we who are head-mistresses of smaller schools will miss her advice and help it is difficult to express.’

And Miss Beale could be most generous in parting[285] with her best even in obedience to the claims of ordinary life, claims which she did not find it easy always to recognise. The following letter gives an example of this:—

Many more extracts might be made from Miss Beale’s letters to show her care for teachers and her supreme interest in all that concerned their welfare, but in many cases they suffer by separation from their context. Therefore, from the large mass of correspondence left, a certain number of letters dealing with various subjects have been selected to form a chapter by themselves.

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CHAPTER XIII
PARERGA

One outcome of Miss Beale’s time of personal spiritual distress, one which bore directly on what she considered as St. Hilda’s work, was an arrangement made for the first time in 1884 for devotional meetings for teachers at the end of the summer term. After 1885, when a second gathering took place, they were held alternately with the biennial Guild meetings. Like much of Miss Beale’s work, these Quiet Days, as they were called, resulted rather from a definite idea than from a formal plan. Their arrangement and character appear to have been due to the occurrence of certain conditions and circumstances while Miss Beale was forming a decision to help others who might be suffering as she herself had done. Plans for this help began to pass through her mind as early as the summer of 1882, while she was herself, as she would have expressed it, ‘in the fire.’ In July 1882 she wrote to a friend:—

It was not till the beginning of 1883 while attending a Retreat in Warrington Crescent—a time to which she often recurred as of much help and strengthening—that Miss Beale was able definitely to consider what might be done. There were friends to whom she could turn, who took trouble to help her by thinking over the matter from her point of view. Among these may specially be mentioned the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson, the late Bishop of St. Andrews, and Canon Body. To Mrs. Benson she wrote:—

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To Canon Body, who had sent her a letter full of sympathy and interest, she wrote:—

Gradually the plan shaped itself. For a time Miss Beale hoped to be able to arrange at Oxford a Retreat followed by a conference, with lectures and discussions on theological subjects. This proved to be impracticable. Then she sought to carry out the plan at Cheltenham. She was advised to limit herself to two or three days of quiet study and devotion with addresses. She would not, however, relinquish the idea of some kind of conference. The scheme stated in the following extract from a letter was very much what was actually carried out:—

The Rev. V. H. Stanton[78] kindly acceded to Miss Beale’s request to give the addresses at the three Quiet Days which opened the conference in 1884. In the following[290] year Canon Mason did this. It is noticeable that on almost every occasion the conductor of this Retreat for teachers was drawn from the ranks of Cambridge. The reason for this Miss Beale often explained, as in the following letter written as late as April 1904:—

Mr. Stanton’s earnest sympathetic addresses were greatly valued by those who were present in 1884. Not less prized was the generous kindness of the Lady Principal in the weeks which followed the Retreat. Miss Beale not only gave frequent addresses on various subjects, continuing in some the line of thought begun on the Quiet Days, she was also constantly at the service of any member of the party for discussion or counsel.

‘I expected certainly to see something of you,’ one who had been present wrote afterwards to her, ‘but that you would constitute yourself the mother of the party, be with us at meals, and do so very much for our improvement and entertainment was quite undreamt of. Indeed, we were all touched by it. I think those quiet days at the beginning gave a special tone of earnestness to the gathering.’

Mrs. Soulsby wrote of the ‘help and comfort you gave to me and so many others by arranging that Retreat. I have never been present at anything so calculated to do steady and lasting good.’

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And many spoke of the ‘sense of fellowship’ which had been gained by meeting so many with like aims and interests; they told how they were going back to work with ‘new hope for the future,’ or with ‘many new lights and helpful suggestions to aid’ them. Some said the work of teaching had been represented to them in a new light, some that the conference helped them to a new start. One told how she was ‘in danger of making shipwreck when your wise counsel saved me.’ Another said: ‘One thing struck me very much, the fellow-feeling and anxiety to help that teachers who have been at Cheltenham have for each other.’

More than a hundred teachers, many of them belonging to Cheltenham, were present for the first days of the conference in 1884. Some twenty outside teachers remained for the whole month. The time was long enough to foster real intimacy. A great deal of time and thought had been devoted to arrangements beforehand, in order that all might get the utmost benefit from the time. In this Miss Beale received much willing co-operation from her own staff, and Miss Caines lent Fauconberg House and her servants. Miss Beale was specially anxious that during the Quiet Days all should have the opportunity of keeping well the silence which was observed. Those who had no rooms of their own had little sitting-rooms assigned them in the College, the music-rooms being available for this purpose. That part of the Cheltenham world which still regarded Miss Beale with suspicion and to whom a Retreat appeared, even as late as 1884, to be a dangerous High Church innovation, raised a cry of alarm. The music-rooms had been turned into cells! It is not known what the word implied to those who made the outcry, and it was soon silenced, but it caused a little annoyance at the time.

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The month passed in teaching and helping, though gladly given out of her own holidays, was an undoubted physical strain to Miss Beale. She wrote to Mrs. Benson:—

And she was tired. The last entry in her diary for that month is this:—

Yet Miss Beale probably felt such a strain far less than any other head-mistress would have done, so absorbingly interesting to her was this kind of work. She always looked back with great pleasure on that time. She treasured the letters she received afterwards from those who had been present, dated from it lasting friendships made with some who had come from other schools, and felt it had drawn her nearer to some of her own teachers.

Miss Beale’s outside interests were concerned, as was natural, chiefly with education. With every educational movement made during the last fifty years in the direction of progress she became to some extent associated. She presided at the first meeting of head-mistresses held in 1874 at Myra Lodge, when the Association for Head-mistresses was founded with Miss Buss as president. ‘I see,’ said Miss Beale of this meeting in 1906, ‘it is recorded that I presided. My recollections are only of lying in great pain on the sofa and taking only a feeble part in the discussion. I little thought that I should be[293] allowed to address a conference which more than thirty years after numbers over two hundred and thirty members.... At our first meeting certain principles were asserted which tended to settle some difficult questions.’ Miss Beale here doubtless refers to the very first resolution passed by this aristocratic body, which was to the effect that no school can work satisfactorily unless the head-mistress be entirely responsible for its internal management. Miss Ridley, in writing of Miss Buss,[79] (to ‘whose insight and foresight,’ said Miss Beale, ‘the founding of the Association was entirely due,’) has shown that the passing of this resolution was in itself almost a raison d’être for the Association. For the rightful position of a head-mistress was not recognised without some difficulty and controversy. The governing bodies of girls’ schools could not at first be selected on the ground of interest and experience in educational matters. Another resolution passed on that occasion was to the effect that an examination to test the power of teachers is desirable.

On the death of Miss Buss, in 1895, Miss Beale became president until 1897, when her term of office expired. She never sought re-election, her increasing deafness making it difficult for her to conduct meetings. She thought a great deal of the importance of the Association and of the discussions which took place at its meetings, and strove in every way to render them not only earnest but fair-minded. ‘I hope,’ she said on one occasion, ‘that our assemblies will not become such as the discussions in Parliament, merely formal, every one having taken a side before and being unmoved by anything said.’ Miss Beale several times read papers to the Association, and in later years the deferential welcome[294] she received from its members was very noticeable. Her last address, given on the request of the Association in June 1906, only a few months before her death, may be regarded as her farewell to the educational world.

When the Association for Assistant Mistresses was formed, Miss Beale regarded it at first with some anxiety. She feared the clash of interests and promotion of suspicion between a head and her staff. Later, when she understood the work of the Association, she received it into favour, and on one occasion addressed a meeting of the western branch at St. Hilda’s. Members of the Association were welcomed, and sometimes spent the morning at College when they came over for branch meetings. Miss Beale, too, was always willing to let those of her staff who belonged to the A.A.M. Committee go up to London to attend meetings in term time, and was pleased when it fell to Miss Lumby, as President of the Association, to give evidence together with Mrs. Withiel, before the Bryce Commission in 1895.

The Teachers’ Guild, founded by Miss Buss in 1883, met with warm support from the head-mistresses of the Association. A branch was started at Cheltenham in the following year, and a paper by Miss Beale read, she herself being indisposed at the time. She used her influence with her own teachers to join the Guild, and frequently addressed the branch meetings on such subjects as the Value of Examinations. In the Froebel Society she was also much interested and subscribed to it regularly. When the Church Schools’ Company was founded in 1883, Miss Beale became at once a member of the Council. She was proud that the College supplied head-mistresses to both the Graham Street and Baker Street Schools.

The hopefulness no increase of years or disappointment[295] could abate, the open mind ever quick to receive what was good and original from those younger and less experienced than herself, were seen in the way Miss Beale greeted the work of the Child-Study Association.

With her consent Miss Louch, then a member of the College staff, proceeded to America in 1894 to attend a course of lectures by Dr. Stanley Hall on child-study. On her return the Association was formed in Edinburgh, and in the same year a branch was started in Cheltenham, with Miss Beale as local president. Before her death she was president of the whole Association, and presided over the conference held in Cheltenham in 1906, the year of her death. When the Paidologist, the organ of the Child-Study Association, was started, Miss Beale contributed largely to the guarantee fund, and for five years was a member of the Magazine Committee. She promoted the work of the Association by trying to get the College staff, boarding-house mistresses, and parents of pupils to join and assist in it.

Miss Beale was among those consulted by Miss Mason when, in 1888, she definitely sought to give the Parents’ Educational Union, which had had a successful year’s work in Bradford, a national name and character. The work of the society appealed greatly to Miss Beale, and the Cheltenham branch was one of the earliest founded. Her name appears among those of the vice-presidents in 1892.

To pass beyond the limits of the work in which, from the fact of her position, the Lady Principal of Cheltenham was called upon to take a part, it may be noticed that she was always much interested in Sunday-school teaching, and wrote many articles upon it. Several of these have been printed. Her interest was caused largely by the numbers of old pupils who took[296] up this work, and who came to her for advice about it, as well as to the congenial nature of religious instruction. Dissatisfied with the methods or want of method prevailing in many Sunday-schools, she had a high ideal of the work for the sake both of teacher and children, and was always ready with sympathy and suggestion. To an old pupil engaged on a paper intended to point out some existing ills in Sunday-schools she wrote in 1880:—

Institutions and societies designed to help the poor of Cheltenham came of course before Miss Beale’s notice. She never, however, allowed herself to be drawn from the pressing requirements of her own work, so as to become acquainted with the details of that which, to some extent, grows up round every church. She was, indeed, on principle, chary in her support of this, maintaining that in a town there was generally great waste of funds and labours, owing to the lack of combination. She wrote as early as 1881 in reference to Cheltenham:—

Among the institutions of Cheltenham, for which Miss Beale specially claimed the need of united action, was the Working Men’s College. She herself on one occasion read a paper there, her subject being ‘Self-support and Self-government from the point of view, not of the individual, but of the College.’ The paper, simple and direct, shows how Miss Beale could throw herself into the minds of those she addressed, appealing to all that was best in them, while at the same time putting her own thoughts into them. It embodies her favourite theories of the danger of helping people through gifts:—

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Among Miss Beale’s papers there exists a very simple address entitled, ‘Is Death the End?’ She intended to read it at a little mission-room, maintained in a very poor street by her friends, Mr. and Mrs. James Owen. The subject was one which had taken strong hold of her fancy at the time. Some one had discovered a dragon-fly emerging from its chrysalis on a water-lily in the little pond which then existed in the Fauconberg House garden adjoining the College grounds. It was taken to Miss Beale, who saw enacted before her own eyes a living parable of resurrection-life. Her childlike delight in this came out in almost every Scripture lesson she gave that summer. The pond was watched for chrysalids; they were taken into the classrooms for the children to see the creatures creep out of their tombs, lie soft and sleepy for a little, then sail away on new-found wings. This true story of the dragon-fly and all it could teach of life, through death, Miss Beale longed to tell to Mrs. Owen’s poor friends. She wrote it carefully, and had little illustrations made; but the lecture[299] was never given. ‘Mrs. Owen would not let me,’ she said sadly, ‘but I think I could have interested them in the dragon-fly.’ But Mrs. Owen was probably right, since the audience for whom the paper was intended was such as Miss Beale knew only in the pages of Browning’s Christmas Eve.

In the work of the Church abroad, in the needs and claims of heathen peoples governed by England, in the various problems which arise out of these vast considerations, Miss Beale was interested only in a secondary way. That is to say, when they came before her in the work of her own pupils, when her girls turned to her for sympathy and help, then she would consider them enough to be able to form some definite opinion, and to give sound advice. The teachings of Hindoo religions and philosophy, and the progress of Christianity in India, came before her as matters of real interest in 1883, when Pundita Ramabai was sent by the Wantage Sisters to study at the College. Miss Beale received her with the utmost warmth and friendship. She made every possible arrangement for her health and protection: she not only put at her disposal every advantage the College could offer, but gave up a large portion of her own valuable time in order to help her personally. She welcomed Ramabai’s long letters on religious questions and difficulties, answering them at equal length. She obtained introductions and arranged interviews for her with many whom she thought could help her. Ramabai’s ‘appetite for philosophy’ (to quote Miss Beale), her enthusiasm and unsparing devotion to the cause of her unhappy sisters in India, touched her deeply, and when the Home for Widows was established at Poona,[80] Miss Beale became a large and regular subscriber[300] to it. Among her papers there is one which was perhaps sent to India, or was perhaps just one of those written expressions of some thought which had seized and filled her mind. It was evidently intended to be an appeal against the cruelty which made such homes for widows necessary:—

Ramabai undoubtedly made Miss Beale realise the[301] need for definite Christian teaching in India. Here is an interesting extract from a letter on this subject:—

On hearing of Miss Beale’s death Ramabai wrote: ‘It is over twenty-one years since I saw Miss Beale for the last time. But her sacred memory is quite fresh, and I seem to hear her pray and give Bible instruction. Her love and influence, her words of encouragement and her prayers on my behalf, have helped me much in my life and work.’

In South Africa, a school at Bloemfontein, still more one at Grahamstown, became of interest at Cheltenham through the influence of Miss Strong, who prepared herself to work in them by some periods of time at the College. Many teachers at the Diocesan School, Grahamstown, were drawn from Cheltenham, and its association of old pupils was for a time affiliated with the Guild. Other old pupils went to India, China, Japan. As the number of Cheltenham missionaries increased, the importance and needs of their work became impressed more and more on some members of the Guild. In 1878 Miss Beale, whose own interest in foreign missions grew steadily in later years, allowed the formation of a Missionary Study Circle within the Guild.[81] This is the only special work other than that of the London Settlement[302] she ever sanctioned, and this one was much safeguarded. When the Occasional Leaflet, the organ of this circle, was first published, she made it a condition that there should be no begging for money, nor even a definite urging of the claims of foreign mission work. She feared girls might be drawn by the attraction of distant and more heroic-seeming activities to neglect duty at home. And, as the present editor of the Leaflet has remarked, ‘She hardly realised how careful societies are in selecting and training would-be missionaries.’

On one occasion Miss Beale, by the request of the late Bishop of Grahamstown,[82] actually addressed a small missionary meeting. She began by saying:—

There was one matter outside her own proper sphere of activity in which Miss Beale was never sparing of money or personal trouble. This was the work to which Mrs. Lancaster had first drawn her in her youth, the rescue and protection of women. It became, as life went on, specially linked with the memory of that other friend, of whom she loved to think as Britomart, rescuing her sister from the fire. When Mrs. Owen died, it was felt instinctively that her work for others must and should continue. There seemed no memorial so fit as a Home for Friendless Girls for one whose chosen task it had been to seek the lost piece of silver. Miss Beale translated, as it were, all her poetical thoughts, all her most tender memories into active co-operation, taking the chair at committees, addressing meetings, making known the needs of the Home, finding workers for it.

Miss Beale herself had learned much since 1856. As time went on she felt less inclined to seek remedies for evil than to prevent its beginning; she looked more to causes than to resulting facts. When in 1885 Mrs. William Grey made an appeal for help in organising some definite movement among the mothers of England against the sins which create the necessity for rescue,[304] Miss Beale responded warmly, urging her to come forward herself to lead it.

Mrs. Grey did not decline the task thus sent back to her, so far as she was able to do it by writing. She was then living abroad in enfeebled health, but her passionate words touched many in England, and a movement which received the name of the Women’s League was set on foot in the usual routine way with committees and meetings. Miss Beale attended one or two of these, but does not appear to have been quite happy at them. She was necessarily hampered by the fact that the name of the College ought not to be associated with this special work. She felt also that she had not sufficiently studied the subject, nor knew enough about the organisation[306] of societies other than educational, to be able to make suggestions before others of wide experience. On one occasion, when a difference of opinion arose about admission to the League, she felt she had not spoken as decisively as she should, and she wrote afterwards to Mrs. Grey: ‘I enclose the two circulars; but please do not question me. It seemed impertinent to speak when there were four or five Bishops’ wives present, and I doubt my judgment. I have given all my thought to other forms of organisation, and I live so much out of the world.’ And to the lady with whom she had specially differed she wrote thus:—

Another letter of this period (March 1886) to Mrs. Grey shows Miss Beale’s calm judgment as well as her sympathy in the difficult work of the League:—

As time went on Miss Beale’s continued sympathy with this particular work was evidenced in larger subscriptions to the National Vigilance Association, to which she also left a legacy. The letters of the last years show her interest in it, and that her horror of a worldly marriage was as great as ever. She wrote to Miss Ellice Hopkins in 1903:—

Cheltenham pupils who in course of time took up the cause of the poor and degraded, found the greatest sympathy and help from Miss Beale. She was always specially ready with sympathy for those who were engaged in an unpopular struggle for good. Among them may be specially mentioned Miss Annette Bear, whose labours in 1894 were instrumental in getting a clause dealing with children employed on the stage added to the Act, afterwards known as the Children’s Charter, and who after her marriage worked successfully for the women’s vote in Australia. A short account of Annette Bear Crawford appeared in the College Magazines for 1899 and 1900.

To an old pupil trying to help her unhappy sisters in Africa she wrote: ‘I must tell you how glad I was to see your name on the Ladies’ National List, and to hear from yourself on the subject. I am so rejoiced when my old girls take up this trying question. Only refined and educated women can handle it successfully.’ She also begged her not to be discouraged by failure, ‘but remember the real thing to aim at is the Suffrage. Without the vote you may cut off one evil to find it coming up again in a worse form, and often, but for the personal discipline, might as well be knocking your head against a stone wall.’

As time went on this question of the vote for women seemed more and more important to Miss Beale. She became a Vice-President of the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage, besides being a regular subscriber.

Naturally, Miss Beale hoped for reform by means of[310] the cultivation of the mind. Much evil she considered came from want of proper interests and from deficient knowledge of life, such as even good reading could to some extent supply. ‘Give them literature lessons,’ she said to an old pupil who had a large class of intelligent Yorkshire factory girls. A letter to another worker shows in what way she hoped women school managers might help to hinder the spread of corruption. It has the additional interest of suggesting a measure akin to one lately adopted by the educational authorities in some counties:—

Miss Beale’s pity for the helpless was not confined to women. She felt deeply the needs of discharged prisoners, and more than once sent donations of money to one of her old girls who was in a position to help them. She also supported Miss Agnes Weston’s work for sailors.

Another class whose needs she fully recognised was that of poor gentle people. Impoverished Irish ladies, governesses, and others, she was always anxious to help,[311] and frequently maintained the duty which richer members of their own class owed to them. Those who asked her aid for these often found her unexpectedly generous. It has been shown how much she undertook, both in money payment and trouble, for girls who could not afford an education befitting their position. Outside this, indeed, her interests may have been held to have been comparatively few; but when she did permit herself to study the problems of her day, she made it evident that the force of mind and will which she concentrated on her own work could also have effected great results in other fields of labour.

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CHAPTER XIV
HONOURS

‘Shall we try to deserve more rather than to win more?’ said Miss Beale when she quoted the phrase of the Roman senate, which heads this chapter, to some children—not of Cheltenham—who were to receive prizes. It well expresses her feeling about rewards. They should grow out of the work; should be some fresh privilege of service. Hence her indifference to prizes in the College. They were given on a percentage of marks obtained in the midsummer examinations. They were announced when the marks of the classes were read to them on the first morning of the next term, but they were never presented: they had to be fetched by the individuals who earned them from the secretary’s room.

The high ideal of deserving rather than gaining was what Miss Beale set before herself as true wealth to be desired. So she was careful, when the management of large public funds and a much increased personal income came to her, to remain as frugal, as poor as ever. It was not merely that she liked simplicity. Her simplicity of life was a deliberate intention. There was a personal note in the fervour with which she would read the words of Abraham to the king of Sodom: ‘I will not take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet, ... lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich.’ No monk was ever more faithful to his chosen bride of Poverty than Miss Beale remained with her large income and successful investments. She was consistent also in preferring for those she loved a simple personal life, which would leave mind and time free for thought and the needs of others.

When first Miss Beale went to Cheltenham she adopted a very simple mode of living, such as she thought would sufficiently meet her needs, and she never changed it. At the age of seventy she would even help to lay her own table for the frugal midday meal, if the general servant had been delayed by household work in the morning. She would walk to the station to save a cab fare, and invariably chose the simplest means of[314] conveyance unless on a matter of urgency. It is true she became rather grander in dress as years went on. ‘What did I wear,’ she wrote to Miss Brown about 1876, after some function she had attended, ‘“velvet and ostrich feathers?” Well, what could I wear but my felt bonnet and old velvet cloak and old black serge? I looked quite smart enough.’ Kind friends there were who liked to see the Lady Principal beautifully dressed, and who were allowed in later life to guide her into velvet and ostrich feathers. She submitted for the sake of the College, for whose good she would cheerfully have worn either sackcloth or cloth of gold!

For the sake of the College, still more for the sake of that work for women and the race which the College represented, Miss Beale gladly greeted honours. That they had anything to do with herself personally, she was not even aware. Her work did indeed receive recognition far and wide from those who prized education, and who regarded it from various points of view.

Among the first to honour it with special notice and a substantial, even magnificent gift, was John Ruskin, when in 1885 he presented to the College two beautiful and valuable manuscripts—one, of the four Gospels, in Greek, written in the eleventh century; another (Antiphonarium Romanum) of the thirteenth century. He gave also a collection of printed books. These were the occasion of an interesting series of letters from Mr. Ruskin to Miss Beale. Some of them are printed here.

Mr. Ruskin’s munificent gifts did not stand alone. Almost every number of the Magazine chronicled some present to the College, some book or picture, scientific apparatus or specimen. Special mention should be made[319] of Dr. Wright’s collection of fossils which formed the foundation for a museum, and of the grant of flint instruments and many animals obtained through Sir William Flower from the British Museum.

The distinctions which came to both Principal and College in the later years of Miss Beale’s headship were very numerous and came from widely differing sources. The College gained gold medals for educational exhibits at the Paris Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900.

The name of Dorothea Beale became known abroad as that of one who had a real interest in education for its own sake and who had no exclusive or insular views. The warm welcome she would extend to educationists of every kind and tongue, the care with which she would personally answer letters of inquiry, the high tone of her addresses at public gatherings, her pamphlets and articles made the name of Cheltenham respected afar. To this may be added the freshness and openness of mind with which she would lend attention to new methods. She always took them seriously, however empirical they might appear,—considered them, tried them if they seemed hopeful, persevered in them if they were proved to be effective, abandoned them if they were inferior to methods already in use. There were many examples of this. Once, for instance, in the eighties, she heard of a method of teaching reading and of preserving discipline which had been evolved by Mrs. Fielden, a clever lady who had established a good elementary school in a Yorkshire manufacturing village. Miss Beale sent an old pupil who lived in the neighbourhood to visit the school, watch its working, and send her full details of the management. After receiving her report, she obtained the loan of one of Mrs. Fielden’s teachers for a week, and had the system[320] introduced by her into the schoolroom of the Third (Junior) Division. It lived but a short time. Miss Nixon, head-mistress of the division, found it mechanical, and it was abandoned.

In Miss Beale’s last term, in September 1906, Mrs. Arthur Somervell’s Rhythmical Mathematics came to her notice. She not only wrote to the author ‘The book is beautiful and the method very suggestive,’ but within a few days introduced it to the teachers whom it concerned and had its principles explained to a class of little children.

Foreign pupils were always welcomed at the College, and made to feel at home. When first it was suggested that some Siamese girls should be received there, Miss Beale wrote eagerly to secure them, and always took the greatest interest in their work. The foreign teachers found her sympathetic and interested, able to understand and allow for their different training and points of view. With some it was not merely a case of mutual esteem. There were those who found she welcomed their friendship and returned it with kindred affection and confidence.

In the summer term of 1889 several foreign educationists came to Cheltenham. Mrs. E. H. Monroe was sent by the Government of the United States, and Signora Zampini Salazaro by the Italian Government, to study English schools and methods. Madame Garnier-Gentilhomme, Officier de l’Instruction Publique, spent a week with Miss Beale. These visits were perhaps not unconnected with the International Congresses of Education which met in Paris in August. These Miss Beale attended, and herself wrote an account of them in the Magazine of autumn 1889, from which some brief extracts are made.

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After enumerating the representatives present from different countries, she continues:—

The Misses Andrews who accompanied Miss Beale on[322] this occasion were impressed by the way she was received and heard. Her deafness did not prevent her taking a part in the discussion, and speaking as she did in a foreign tongue, she yet dominated her large international audience. She showed extraordinary indifference to her own comfort. Miss Alice Andrews remembers, for instance, a luncheon in the neighbourhood of the Sorbonne, at a little restaurant to which they had been guided by some acquaintance. Miss Beale and Miss Buss found themselves in the midst of artists and students, some of whom carried on pronounced flirtations with the waitress girls. Miss Beale sat calmly writing her speech for the next meeting, indifferent to her déjeûner and unconscious of her surroundings.

The Congress of Secondary and Superior Instruction was followed by a Congress of Primary Teachers, for which Miss Beale was induced to stay. One day she addressed it:—

Greatly pleased as Miss Beale was with much she saw, she quickly perceived that she could not work herself with such a system as prevailed in France. ‘I do not wish to see secondary education in England subject in any way to a Government department, or secondary schools in England assimilated to primary.’

All the intervals of the Congress were filled with visits to various educational institutions and interviews with leading educationists. There was a visit to Fontenay-aux-Roses, to a deaf school, to a primary[323] school and kindergarten, to the Musée Pédagogique. There were also some visits less of the nature of business. Once, at least, they went by invitation to the Théâtre Français, where they witnessed a representation of the Femmes Savantes. There were also many receptions. Miss Alice Andrews wrote:—

It was a great happiness to Miss Beale to see so much good work going on, and to meet so many who really cared for the cause for which she lived.

The immediate result to the College of this Congress of 1889 was an honour for its Principal when Miss Beale was made Officier d’Académie. In the following year a meeting of the ‘Société des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes’ met at Cheltenham. Miss Beale was elected a member of this Society, by means of which many French students came to Cheltenham. After her death a little article upon Miss Beale appeared in Les Langues Modernes, the monthly organ of this Society.[324] It rightly acknowledged the welcome and the constant kindness that foreign students always received from her.

A further result was the permission granted by the French Government for the admission of students from the College to Fontenay-aux-Roses. This permission was much prized by Miss Beale, who was comforted by it for delays which had occurred in the opening of St. Hilda’s, Oxford.

Another recognition of her work for education came to Miss Beale in 1896, when Durham University conferred upon her the distinction of Tutor in Letters. The widespread influence of that work was emphasised by her election in 1898 as a Corresponding Member of the National Education Association, U.S.A. In her letter acknowledging this honour Miss Beale said: ‘We[325] receive much inspiration from the States, and possess in our Library a large number of valuable works from Americans on Philosophy and Education.’ She was specially attached to the writings of Dr. Harris.

The contrasts existing between girls’ education as it was in 1865 and thirty years later must have been brought very forcibly before Miss Beale when, in 1894, she was again asked to give evidence before a Royal Commission. The chairman of this was Mr. Bryce, who had himself inspected and reported for the Taunton Commission of 1864-7. The composition of this later body marked the advance that had been made. Of its seventeen members three were women. Well might Miss Beale say that the changes she had witnessed were ‘inconceivably great.’ Her own position was changed. On the first occasion she had merely been the able representative of a little known and rather despised class of workers. On the second she came as one of the recognised leaders of a band whose work was becoming yearly more valuable and more important.

Miss Beale was first questioned on the co-operation and co-relation of different schools in one neighbourhood. She expressed herself in favour of the co-operation of teachers, not of unity in governing bodies, ‘because one governing body is rather apt to generalise and say that everything that is suitable for boys should be done for girls.’ She was also careful to say that there must be a supreme authority in each school. One point of special interest to-day is the discussion which took place on the teaching of the classics to girls. Miss Beale, as has been shown, was never in favour of teaching either Latin or Greek to young girls, and she maintained her objections on this occasion. She thought it a mistake to begin[326] Greek at the age of eleven or twelve, though she admitted that it was easier to learn than Latin. ‘But children,’ she said, ‘do not enter into the delicacies and refinements of the Greek language, ... and they get tired of it.... I do not think the most intelligent teacher could make a child like the intricacies of grammar early.’[85]

Miss Beale does not seem to have mentioned one reason why she would not teach Latin early until, in 1898, she wrote in Work and Play: ‘I feel strongly that Latin should, however, properly come after German, specially for girls. There is a pestilential atmosphere in the Campania, and one needs to have one’s moral fibre braced by the poetry of the Hebrews and of England and Germany, if one would remain unaffected by writings saturated with heathen thought.’

Other points discussed were the training of teachers, a subject on which Miss Beale had much to say. She insisted on the advantages of associating training colleges with large schools: ‘If students get simply lectures, and ideas which they have not an opportunity of carrying into practice, they become unpractical, and they have to learn the practical parts of their profession when they become teachers.’ The question of scholarships was introduced; Miss Beale enunciated her theory that they should be given irrespective of place. It ought not to be possible for one institution to buy up scholars from another. She admitted that she would like to make necessity a condition of holding a scholarship. ‘Would not that,’ asked Dr. Fairbairn, I carry with it to a large extent what one may term a social distinction,—even a stigma in certain cases?’ ‘I think,’ was the reply, ‘if[327] people are ashamed of being poor, they ought to be ashamed of being ashamed of it.’

Some points there were on which the Commissioners desired enlightenment from Miss Beale’s experience, but got little help. One of these was by what means a passage might be effected from primary to secondary schools and the universities. Miss Beale, who disliked free education, had in 1895 even less sympathy with elementary teaching than she had a few years later, when she undertook to train students for it. The indication she gave the Commission was a suggestion that to meet the needs of the prize pupils of the elementary schools, it would be best to found higher schools of the same class, as she maintained that, owing largely to the influences of their homes, children coming from primary schools could not profit by the kind of education existing in secondary schools as they are.

Three or four times the chairman also sought to obtain an opinion from her on the difference between boys and girls, but was always met by some such answer as, ‘I do not profess to say much about boys.’

It was an excellent thing that Miss Beale was asked by Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co. to put forth her own original ideas, and state something of her long experience concerning education, in the volume which appeared in 1898 under the title Work and Play in Girls’ Schools. Designed primarily for the enlightenment of the generation which first received it, the book will remain as an historical record of methods actually in use at the Ladies’ College.

With the two last sections of this work Miss Beale had nothing to do: that on the ‘Moral Side of Education’ was written by Miss Soulsby, the concluding chapter on the ‘Cultivation of the Body’ was from the pen[328] of Miss Dove. Yet it is worthy of notice that both these able and original-minded head-mistresses were for a time teachers at Cheltenham. Miss Beale felt that Miss Soulsby’s chapter should have been first in the book; but as her own section is so very much the longest, and as it would have been impossible to her to treat of education from the intellectual side only and apart from its bearing on character, there is nothing to be regretted in the arrangement. One of Miss Beale’s chapters is, moreover, devoted to the question of Philosophy and Religion.

A letter she wrote to Miss Strong on this subject is interesting:—

This book, the most important of Miss Beale’s mature age—she was verging on sixty when it was published—was written with all the enthusiasm of youth. The hopefulness and freshness of a young teacher, heightened rather than restrained by the experience of years, glow on every page. Nor is the idealism of the student missing. Notice specially for this the passage on astronomy on page 254:[86] ‘Thus [is] the mathematical passion awakened; surely most of us can remember the first time that our soul really ascended into[329] the seventh heaven.’ The chapter entitled Psychological Order of Study,’ in which this passage occurs, is perhaps the most suggestive in the book, which abounds in the results of ripened thought and knowledge. But that on the ‘Relation of School to Home’ was most impressive to those who did not already know the writer’s views on the subject. In ‘A Few Practical Precepts’ occur one or two phrases which might well pass into scholastic proverbs, as for instance this: ‘It is a worse fault to teach below than above the powers of a child.’

Miss Beale did not write the whole of that part of the book for which she made herself responsible. Some parts were given to specialists upon the College staff, in order that all the subjects might be treated with expert knowledge.

Miss Beale’s own life during this later period naturally became more social than ever before. She attended many public functions, and was brought constantly into touch with those who shared her high intellectual aims or literary work. Among these was Dr. Jowett, to whom she felt she owed a special debt for his translation of the Republic. A day came at last, in 1893, when, as a witty friend said, she and the Master lunched together, ‘with Plato as an unobtrusive third.’

In 1894, accompanied by Miss Draper, she made another visit to Paris, to be present at the wedding of Lady Victoria Blackwood and Mr. W. L. Plunket. She greatly enjoyed the experience, especially Lord Dufferin’s friendliness.

[330]

The diary which Miss Beale still kept carefully, though briefly, gives a glimpse of this fuller outside life, but remains faithful to its early character as a record of thought and aspiration. A few extracts from the last years are given.

The year 1895, which opened sadly with the death of Miss Buss, was marked by wide extensions of the Cheltenham College work. The playground was now in daily use. A triumph of the athletic tendency of the age, it was also an emphatic mark of Miss Beale’s acceptance of new ideas. To the end she could not quite understand why it was wanted, but she saw it had to be, and even grew proud of it in its way.

In 1895 the old Cheltenham theatre, which the College had purchased a few years before, was razed to the ground, and the erection of a new, fine building in its place, as an integral part of the College buildings, was begun. This was an immense hall,[90] capable of holding nearly two thousand people, and possessed of remarkable acoustic qualities. It was fitted up with a large stage[332] and everything necessary for the acting which had already become a feature of the Guild meetings. The Guild plays grew to be Miss Beale’s recreation in her old age. It was an immense pleasure to see the stories and poems she had prized all her life made living on the stage. She had a keen dramatic sense, and delighted in watching rehearsals and personally coaching some of the individual actors. She was interested even in getting details of dress as correct as possible, and in the schemes of colour, objecting to a predominance of red, a colour she always disliked. The Guild plays were of course chosen, like the subjects of her literature lessons, with a view to elevate rather than to entertain. Three performances specially stand out in the memory: Comus, in 1896, with its exquisite dancing and dressing; that of Griselda, in 1904; and the last of all, with its prophetic note of farewell, Hatshepset, in 1906. Probably Griselda most of all appealed to Miss Beale, who gave an interpretation all her own to Chaucer’s tale. She saw in it a spiritual allegory of God’s dealings with the soul, and she set it forth in a beautiful little introduction to the story. Years before it had been proposed that Sir Edwin Arnold’s Griselda should be taken for the College play. She wrote very strongly against it to Miss Wolseley Lewis:—

In the early part of 1895 Miss Beale was more than usually active and well. In the Easter holidays she paid a long-promised visit to Miss Mason’s House of Education at Ambleside. Here she gave a lecture to the students on Geometry. The visit was a great pleasure, she was in full sympathy with Miss Mason’s work, and she enjoyed meeting Miss Arnold at Fox Howe, and many friends and pupils. In June she was present at a performance of the Alcestis at Bradfield College; she also went again to the Royal Society conversazione.

The active enjoyment of this summer received a check at the term-holiday, when, while walking on Leckhampton Hill, Miss Beale slipped and broke her leg. The period of forced inaction which followed was generally held to be good for her, and she was well enough to be carried into the College for the addresses of the Quiet Days at the end of the term. She was unable, however, to be present at the Oxford summer meeting in August. The paper she had written for this on the Professional Education of Teachers was read by Mr. Worsley.

A school which has neither prize-giving nor speech-day does not easily obtain very highly distinguished visitors. It was not till 1897 that the College was honoured by the presence of Royalty. In that year the Empress Frederick of Germany proposed a visit. Her[334] interest in education led her to wish to see the classes at work in their usual conditions. She therefore went with Miss Beale from one room to another while the actual teaching was going on. A few days after her visit Miss Beale received the following letter from Major-General Russell, who was at that time member for Cheltenham:—

Two years later the Princess Henry of Battenberg came to unveil a marble bust of Queen Victoria, the work of Countess Feodora Gleichen, which had been presented to the College.

The Empress Frederick at Cheltenham
from a photograph by Mr. Domenico Barnett

Among Miss Beale’s triumphs of this period should surely be mentioned her mastery of the tricycle at the age of sixty-seven. It became a great delight to her. She used it chiefly in the early morning—often very early—when the streets were empty. ‘The men in the[335] milk-carts know me and keep out of my way,’ she would say. She greatly enjoyed the fresh air and complete solitude gained with so little effort.

In 1898 England received a severe visitation of small-pox. No town in the country suffered more than Gloucester, where for long it raged among the unvaccinated, and even devoted nurses and doctors fell victims. It was five times introduced into Cheltenham, but owing, Miss Beale was pleased to hint in the Magazine, to the healthiness of the climate and the good sanitation of the town, it never got a hold there. Cheltenham largely owed its immunity to the exertions of the Lady Principal, who insisted on revaccination 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.’

Among the College victims was a girl within a few weeks of an important examination. The daughter of an anti-vaccinator, she had of course never been ‘done,’ and the father telegraphed that he would not permit it. A married sister staying in the town urged the College authorities to act on their own responsibility; but that Miss Beale would not do. The girl made another appeal to her father; but a cab was actually at the door to take her to the station, when his answer arrived in the second telegram—‘May do as she pleases.’ This modified permission saved the situation.

Miss Beale’s determined and successful action in this[336] matter was doubtless remembered when, in 1901, the Mayor and Corporation resolved to bestow upon her the freedom of the borough. This was ceremonially done on October 28, the Town Council, Governing Body of the College, and a large number of Miss Beale’s friends being present.

‘The honour,’ said the Mayor (Mr. Norman) in his preliminary address to the Council, ‘is given with discrimination, and somewhat rarely. We in Cheltenham, during the thirty years of our corporate life, have only conferred it in two instances.... I am charged to-day with the proposing of a resolution which will add a third to that number. The resolution is in these terms:—

‘When I first approached Miss Beale on this subject, I did not know whether any lady had before been admitted a freeman of the borough. But from the wording of the Act of Parliament I was quite sure that the term “freeman” in the section quoted was used in a generic sense, and that ladies were as eligible as men to the honour which we propose to confer upon Miss Beale. I was therefore prepared to create a precedent, if necessary. But since then I have learned that at least in one case, that of Baroness Burdett Coutts, this honour has been conferred upon a lady.’

In her reply Miss Beale said:—

In the same year Miss Beale was co-opted a member of the Advisory Board of the University of London.

The recognition by the town was from every point of view a triumph and an honour. The year in which it took place and the preceding one were marked by large extension of boarding-house property and many other signs of wealth. But for Miss Beale herself it can have been no time of great gladness. Though her vitality was as great as ever, her health was less good, her deafness much increasing, her sight impaired. Constantly she was called upon to part by death from some old and valued friend or fellow-worker. In January she shared the general mourning for Queen Victoria. In March 1901 Miss Caines died; a month later the beloved sister Eliza and Canon Hutchinson, of whom Miss Beale spoke as a friend and pastor of many years, were buried on the same day. Miss Beale turned from her sister’s grave to write last words to be read after her own death should she be called away while still head of the College. She also revised her will and wrote directions concerning her personal belongings and her funeral.

But if the road to the Dark Tower grew lonely,[93] it was greatly brightened by the love of those she had taught,[339] inspired, and helped. No parent was ever more closely encompassed by the love of children. There were those at Cheltenham who thought for her, waited on her, read to her—no light task—those who, should she desire it, were ever at her beck and call. Some of these were on the College Council. One, in particular, Miss Flora Ker, who lived at Cheltenham, was always at hand, making the interests of the College and little attentions to Miss Beale the first duty of her day. Another, who had become head of a boarding-house, thought of her daily needs to the smallest details. A third habitually accompanied her on the visits which became so great an enjoyment in these later years, and on the frequent business journeys to London, making them easy by many little thoughtful arrangements. Miss Beale would seem unconscious of these at the moment, but she deeply valued the thought and the loving service of which she availed herself to the full. The Chairman and different members of the Council showed also much personal consideration for the Principal. Nor could she travel anywhere without finding ‘old girls’ ready to welcome and make much of her in every way. In these things she had indeed ‘all that should accompany old age.’

In 1902 came a crowning honour for the Ladies’ College when its Principal was offered the LL.D. by the Edinburgh University, in recognition of her services to education. Miss Beale was simply and unfeignedly delighted with this acknowledgment of the worth of women’s work. Her loyal staff seized the occasion to give her a personal sense of satisfaction also. They presented her with her robes, which were made as costly and beautiful as possible. A journey to Scotland was a great adventure to Miss Beale, but the occasion warranted the effort. As usual, all the arrangements were left in[340] the hands of Miss Alice Andrews, who with others of the College staff accompanied the Principal. It was examination week at Cheltenham, or such a flight of teachers would not have been possible. The degree was conferred on April 11 in the M’Ewan Hall of Edinburgh University. Others who received it on the same occasion were Lord Alverstone, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Austin Dobson, Sir John Batty Tuke, and Dr. Rücker.[94] Only once before had the University conferred this degree on a woman, viz. on Miss Ormerod, in recognition of her great services to agriculture.

Photo. G. H. Martyn & Sons

Dorothea Beale, LL.D.

Sir Ludovic Grant, Dean of the Faculty of Law, thus summed up Miss Beale’s claim to a national recognition:—

Her account of the ceremony is best read in her own letter to the Vice-Principal:—

At Glasgow Miss Beale stayed with a married pupil, and found herself in the midst of ‘old girls,’ who made much of her. From Glasgow she wrote a second letter, to be read to the assembled College before the dispersion for the holidays:—

From Mrs. Osborne in Glasgow Miss Beale went on to stay with other old pupils in Scotland, coming afterwards to Newcastle, where she was asked to launch a ship. Her ignorance of use and wont under conditions fairly well known to most people came out when she[343] attired herself for this event in well-looped-up dress and indiarubber shoes. Much as she disliked adventure, she was prepared to march into the Tyne if the glory of the Ladies’ College demanded it. However, she much enjoyed the ceremony that actually took place,—the drive to the docks, the description she received of the vessel, the bouquet of roses presented to her in honour of St. George’s Day. Her diary at this point becomes crowded with facts concerning steamers and dock labourers. From Newcastle Miss Beale went to Durham, where she stayed with the Dean; then to York. Wherever she went there were schools to visit, and perhaps address, ‘old girls’ to see. A night in London ended the wanderings, and she came home well and happy to enter in her diary: ‘Arrived to the hour, exactly three weeks after starting, having spent the night in nine different places, and feeling quite refreshed by meeting with so much kindness, and so many charming old girls.’

The year which had so bright a spring brought but a sorry autumn for Miss Beale. In October 1902 she was—an unheard-of thing—obliged to leave Cheltenham for her health, and went to Bath, accompanied by Miss Berridge, for several weeks. Her sight was a special anxiety, and during this time she was not allowed to write or read. A letter from Miss Berridge to Miss Sturge gives a glimpse of the life at Bath:—

Miss Beale was able to return to work before the end of the term. She seemed in most ways as vigorous as ever. A doctor, whom she consulted about her deafness in 1903, told her she had the pulse of a woman of forty. But she became more and more careful about her health. Her summer holidays were spent at Oeynhausen, where she followed a ‘Kur.’ There she took with her always some friend who devoted herself to the care of Miss Beale, and at the same time was a congenial companion, reading aloud to her, or listening while Miss Beale read. On one occasion Miss Amy Giles went, on another Fräulein Grzywacz. The life at the baths was carefully planned even to minutes. Miss Beale liked to have her morning letters before the early walk, which the daily régime demanded. While waiting for the postman, even watching his appearance along the street, she would have some deep book read aloud to her, able to give her whole attention. ‘The postman is just here, Miss Beale,’ Fräulein Grzywacz would say, as she finished a chapter. ‘He is still ten doors off, you can read another paragraph,’ would be the reply.

[345]

In 1902 a determined and successful effort was made to get a worthy portrait of Miss Beale. Early in the College history a picture, which bore but a faint resemblance to the original and was wholly unworthy of her, had been painted, and at a Council meeting in 1873 it was ‘resolved that it be placed (veiled) over the door of the Council room, as most in accordance with the wishes of the donors.’ In 1889 the Council itself approached Miss Beale on the subject of a portrait, Sir Samuel Johnson, then chairman, writing to her:—

On the envelope containing this letter Miss Beale wrote in pencil the characteristic note: ‘Miss Stirling might make a clay or terra-cotta.’ A modelling class had recently been opened in the College under Miss Stirling; Miss Beale was much interested in it and anxious to encourage it.

The wish of the Council took the form of a resolution to which Miss Beale replied:—

Later, she consented to give a few sittings to Mrs. Lea Merritt, for whose work she had a great admiration. The approach of the College Jubilee made a new moment for appealing to her again on this subject, and at the Guild meeting of 1902 she was presented with the following address, composed by Miss Amy Lumby and signed by a large number of old pupils:—

Miss Beale was much touched by this appeal. She received it in eloquent silence, but at the last gathering before the Guild members separated her reply was read aloud by Miss Ker:—

[347]

The work was entrusted to Mr. J. J. Shannon, R.A., who had proved his ability for the task by the portraits of Miss Clough and Miss Wordsworth. No effort was spared by the painter to realise Miss Beale at her best,[96] and she gave a good deal of time to sittings, which were employed also in listening to reading aloud. Dr. Illingworth’s Personality Human and Divine, a very favourite work of hers, was often chosen. Sometimes this work was displaced by Lorna Doone, which Miss Beale said ‘amused the painter.’ The Lady Principal was painted in her LL.D. robes, but also in her familiar head-dress, son petit bonnet de douairière. She is represented as looking up with the glance well known to those who had watched her when she lectured. The attitude, which is as much that of disciple as teacher, was fitly chosen.

The portrait was formally presented by the Duchess of Bedford on November 8, 1904, and with it an illuminated book containing the names of the donors. Miss Beale in her reply said:—

For various reasons it was necessary to postpone the College Jubilee celebrations until May 1905. On this occasion a bust of Miss Beale was presented to the College by some admirers of her work who were not connected with it. A large new wing built for science teaching was opened by Lord Londonderry, then President of the Board of Education; and there were many distinguished guests. Two memorable speeches were made on this great occasion. One by the Chairman of the Council, Dr. Magrath, Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, who made a brief but very sympathetic retrospect of the past history of the Ladies’ College. The other was from Mrs. Bryant, Head-mistress of the North London Collegiate School. She, as was fitting, looked forward to the future, and foreshadowed a large development of the work so well begun and established at Cheltenham. This Jubilee Day was the only public commemoration the Ladies’ College ever had. It was fitting that there should be one great public acknowledgment of Miss Beale’s work before the day came when she must leave it to the guidance of another.

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CHAPTER XV
THE LAST TERM

At the beginning of the year 1905 Miss Beale sought to induce Bishop Ellicott, who had then resigned his see of Gloucester, to continue to visit the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, as he had done for upwards of thirty years. He declined on the ground of ill-health, saying, ‘Among the many things that I regret being unable to attend to, I regret none more than the addresses to the bright-eyed attentive hearers I always secured at the College. But all things must have an end.’ This was written but a few months before the Bishop’s death.

Miss Beale, happily for her active spirit, was not thus summoned to retire from work owing to age or feeble health. She had expressed more than once the wish that she might die in harness, and her letters since 1900 had frequently breathed the wonder that she should still last on, and up to the summer of 1906 there was nothing to suggest that the end was really drawing near.

The last Christmas holidays were happy. Miss Beale made a round of visits. At Lindfield she stayed with Miss Keyl, an old Gloucestershire friend, in London with Mrs. Tallents, an old pupil. Lastly, having been joined by Miss Alice Andrews, she went for a few days to[350] Miss Wedgwood, whose sister, Lady Farrer, was also staying with her. Miss Beale greatly enjoyed her time with these old friends whom she had first known as pupils at Queen’s College. She was singularly active. ‘I dare say you would like to do just one thing each day,’ said one hostess to her, little realising the vitality which would carry her on through a long series of events such as would tire out most younger people.

The spring passed with little special incident, but for Miss Beale it was saddened by the death of Mrs. Charles Robinson in March.

In the Easter holidays Miss Beale much enjoyed a visit to Miss Mellish, Head-mistress of the Ladies’ College, Guernsey. Here she made many new acquaintances, took drives, saw places of interest, and kept an account of all in her diary. But the draft of a letter to some friend during this visit shows, that in spite of her courageous spirit, she felt her own term of work in this world to be practically over.

In the summer, having at first declined the invitation, Miss Beale was persuaded to address the Head-mistresses’[351] Conference, which met on June 8 and 9 at the Clapham High School. In spite of the deafness, which made her dread committee meetings, she took her share in the discussions. Speaking on a resolution concerning the suffrage she said: ‘The underpayment of women went to the heart of all as a crying evil, and made every one earnest about the extension of the suffrage.’ She also in a later discussion expressed her emphatic disapproval of afternoon compulsory school, and related the history of the change made at Cheltenham in 1864.

The address to the assembled head-mistresses on the following morning, Miss Beale’s last public utterance, may well find a place here. Full of the tenderest regard for the past, appreciating as no younger worker could the ideals and conflicts of her own generation, that utterance showed a front of marvellous courage and hope to the anxieties of the present and future.

On her way to Paddington after the Head-mistresses’ Conference, the cab which contained Miss Beale and Miss Andrews was run into by another, a shaft shattering the window beside Miss Beale.

She did not realise her danger or that her shawl was full of bits of broken glass. The accident is alluded to in the letter she afterwards wrote to Mrs. Woodhouse, whose guest she had been at Clapham.

[355]

It was the year of the Guild meetings. A very large number of old pupils, larger than ever before, came to Cheltenham in June, for every year saw additions to the roll of members and no falling off among the elder ones, who felt each time might be the last occasion on which the beloved Principal would preside. The subject chosen for the play was the very unusual one of a story from Egyptian history. No pains were spared to render it truthfully; Dr. Budge was consulted, the Book of the Dead studied; Miss Beale herself gave a lecture on the history of Egypt, a subject she had never worked up before. The story of the great queen whose life was given up to her country, ordered wholly for their good, with no private interests; whose marriage was an act of sacrifice; who ruled her people with large-minded beneficence, and under whom they prospered; who finally, as age came upon her, resigned for their sake, seemed strangely appropriate for the close of Miss Beale’s long work for Cheltenham. The very remoteness of the story, its gravity, the absence from it of such didacticism as abounded in Miss Beale’s interpretation of Britomart and Griselda, made it all the more forcible. It was in no way premeditated. Miss Beale herself said she did not much care for it, as it contained so little spiritual teaching. But as the curtain fell upon Hatshepset’s resignation and death, the crowded audiences of past and present pupils palpably realised that for them the inevitable change awaiting the College had been, if unconsciously, foreshadowed.

[356]

The Guild arrangements, which generally included an address from Miss Beale on Saturday morning and a closing one on Monday from some speaker invited for the purpose, were altered in 1906 to suit the convenience of the Bishop of Stepney. The earlier address was given by the Bishop after the College prayers, which Miss Beale herself read as usual. His subject was the work of St. Hilda’s East and the needs of East London. He held his hearers enthralled as he spoke to them of those other girls and women whom they were meant to help. But even more striking than the strong words of the young Bishop was the sight of the frail and aged form of her, so long their teacher and inspirer, to whom most of those present were consciously and deeply indebted for much that was best in their lives. Miss Beale, with the familiar smile which marked her enthusiastic approval, stood the whole time close to the Bishop, straining to hear every word, her eye alert to trace the effect of what he was saying on his audience. Many who saw her thus saw her for the last time, as they had to leave Cheltenham when the morning Guild meetings were over. Miss Beale herself left before the end, unequal to the long strain they involved.

On Sunday the usual admission of new members took place. On Monday Miss Beale addressed the Guild for the last time. It was not unnatural that she should speak on this occasion as one who looked back on the changes and progress of fifty years. Miss Beale conveyed to her hearers the suggestion that it was not with unmixed satisfaction that she surveyed matters from this standpoint. In the midst of advantages, such as the last generation could not know, their eyes opened to the needs of others, needs they could supply, many women remained not serious, not devoted. She appealed for[357] more earnestness in all, that there might be none wearing the Guild badge who should not be able to use the motto of St. Hilda’s, Oxford: Non frustra vixi.

So passed this great gathering of friends. It was only afterwards that it came to be known that below her joyous affectionate welcome, her ready sympathy and quick memory for her children and their concerns, lay a deep reason for personal anxiety, that she was beginning to suspect herself to be the victim of a serious malady. Only once was there a sign of uneasiness, when she seemed much distressed not to have seen again an old pupil and Guild member, Dr. Aldrich-Blake, who had been obliged to leave Cheltenham without saying good-bye to her.

The summer holidays were again spent at Oeynhausen. She wrote in the course of them that she was deriving benefit from the treatment, but certainly it was far less effective than before. Nor did she give herself a chance of throwing off the cares of work. In the ordinary sense of the word, indeed, Miss Beale could never rest, and though physically less strong her brain seemed inexhaustibly active. She corrected the Magazine proofs, engaged new teachers, and wrote many letters to the College secretary, going as usual into all kinds of details about arrangements for new pupils. Nor did she even rest from study. She wrote to Cheltenham for a table of German genders; while from Mr. Worsley she asked the Scripture examination papers, which he had as usual undertaken. Her letter shows this continued activity of mind:—

She was glad to get back to Cheltenham, but those who knew her best saw that it was only by a stern effort of will that she nerved herself to begin her work in the ordinary way. They began to hope that she might not much longer be called upon to make what was visibly a tremendous effort. Nothing was left undone.

School began on September 22. Miss Beale, as usual on the first day of term, gave a short address after prayers to the assembled teachers and children. She spoke, as often before, of the parable of the Talents, but mainly of the joy of the Lord—the joy and reward of being fellow-workers with God. Strangely fitting did her words afterwards seem for the last time she addressed the College as a body.

In the month which followed only a few saw signs of the weakness and illness which had really begun. She had undertaken the usual courses of lectures, and missed none. The College numbers were very large, the life as full and vigorous as ever. There was even a new department started for the first time that term, in the arrangement—the revolution of Time’s wheel having been made—of courses of lessons in cookery.

On October 16 the annual Council meeting was held in London. In order to spare herself fatigue, Miss Beale did not as usual accompany Miss Alice Andrews to the Oxford meeting on the previous evening, but went up alone from Cheltenham the next morning. It[359] meant a long day and an early start, earlier than ever before, as the time of departure had been altered. This Miss Beale only learned the same morning, but with her habit of being ready long beforehand she was able to catch the train. This, by the new arrangement, did not wait for the Oxford train by which Miss Andrews went up. Consequently, when Miss Andrews arrived at the Paddington Hotel, Miss Beale had already gone to see her doctor, Miss Aldrich-Blake. Probably she preferred to make this visit alone.

To Miss Aldrich-Blake she owned that she was tired, that she felt her much impaired hearing and sight to be a hindrance to work; but she made light of the malady which was her real and undefined dread. Miss Aldrich-Blake, however, advised an immediate operation, in spite of the annual general meeting fixed for November 16,[99] on account of which Miss Beale wished to put it off for the present. On leaving the doctor’s house Miss Beale went on alone to keep one or two appointments. At the Council meeting in the afternoon she showed no fatigue, but read her report with animation. Miss Andrews then joined her for St. Hilda’s committee meeting. They left this meeting in time to catch the afternoon train back to Cheltenham. Miss Beale generally slept for part of this journey; that day she was wakeful and tired, but she said nothing then to Miss Andrews of what the doctor had told her. She did, however, shortly tell Miss Rowand, who persuaded her to see Dr. Cardew. He confirmed Dr. Aldrich-Blake’s opinion, and Miss Beale then made up her mind to enter a nursing home, hard by the College, on Monday, October 22. During these intervening days she went on with her usual work, and silently made preparation[360] for what might be a final parting from it. On Sunday, which she spent alone but for a visit from Fräulein Grzywacz, she wrote a large number of letters. One was to the Vice-Principal, Miss Sturge:—

One to Miss Gore:—

On Monday, October 22, Miss Beale read prayers as usual, choosing a hymn by Miss Fermi from the collection of school hymns she herself had made:—

After prayers she gave her last Scripture lesson—the usual Monday lesson to the assembled First Division. The subject was the Healing of the Body, in connection with thoughts suggested by St. Luke’s Day, and the[361] Gospel for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity. It was a remarkable lesson. One who had not been present said that, when she entered the Hall after it was over, people were talking of Miss Beale’s wonderful Scripture lesson. In it she dwelt, as often before, on the duty of the care of health; and yet it was not to be the first consideration. She showed why sickness of the body is often for our profit. Then, having touched on wrong teachings about the body, as, for instance, those of Buddhism, she showed that the Incarnation brought unity of the whole being, at-one-ment of body, soul, and spirit. She concluded with the words: ‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.’

After the lesson Miss Beale read the weekly class marks, as usual on Mondays. In the course of the morning she discussed a paper she had written, for the American National Educational Association, with Miss Alice Andrews. Miss Andrews told her that a member of the staff had lost her mother, and during the day Miss Beale wrote a note of sympathy. In a second interview that morning Miss Beale told Miss Andrews that the doctor had told her she must lie up for some weeks. ‘But I am not going away, I shall be amongst you all.’

Miss Sturge noticed that Miss Beale lingered in the Hall when school was over, as if unwilling to leave. She seemed pathetically anxious to leave nothing undone. Finally, after discussing several small matters, she said, ‘Good-bye; I hope to come back in three weeks, and you can just say I am resting. I will not tell you where, and then if you are asked you will not know.’ Then she added wistfully, ‘Perhaps I may never come back.’ On that afternoon, accompanied by Miss Rowand, she went to the nursing home.

[362]

The operation took place next day. Miss Beale found it hard just at first to reconcile herself to the position of patient, and the absolute obedience and dependence it involved. But in the charge of Miss Lane and her staff she was surrounded with loving care, to which she was most responsive, once pointing out to a friend the nurse who was standing by as ‘the one who spoils me so.’ Miss Gore and Miss Rowand saw her from time to time. The mid-term holiday was approaching, and she spoke of arrangements for it, and begged Miss Rowand to send her party for their usual expedition in charge of the house-governesses, and to remain at home herself.

Up to the morning of Sunday the 28th all seemed to go well. Very early that day she seemed ill, and wandering in mind, getting up and saying she must go to early service. In the afternoon she was quiet and calm, and saw one or two friends. To Miss Gore she spoke of the coming All Saints’ Day, saying how much the Communion of Saints meant to her.

On this day also, by the hand of Miss Lane—but she signed it herself—she wrote a last letter to Miss Amy Giles[100]:—

On Monday came the change for the worse; nervous prostration, from which she never rallied, although one day there seemed a gleam of hope, and during the brief improvement she dictated to Miss Lane, at the doctor’s request, some details of the days before the operation:—

Once after this she recognised the doctor. Once she asked for her Prayer-book and spectacles, but before they could be brought she had lapsed again into unconsciousness. When her sister addressed her by name, she[364] turned her head, but did not open her eyes. Then on November 8 appeared more alarming bulletins, and on the 9th the fatal notice, ‘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, 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:—

Miss 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.

‘“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[365] that love lasts 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.

Of the days immediately following Miss Beale’s death, Miss Sturge wrote: ‘Many of the staff and elder pupils were privileged to see the beloved form as it lay in the peace and majesty of death. Though not one of the thousand workers at College can have been unconscious of the mighty change that had come for all, the work went on as usual, and the College was closed only on November 16, the day of the funeral.’

The paper which Miss Beale intended should be read at College prayers on her death was not found at the time. This was well. She certainly had not weighed what the effect of her words, written with calm deliberate detail years before, would be if read to assembled numbers at the very moment of shock and loss.

In this paper she first explained the directions she had left in her will about the funeral:—

But this was only a preface. She spoke chiefly of rising through death to fuller and higher life,—of the purification which all who would see God must desire. Finally she asked:—

On Monday, November 12, the body was cremated at Perry Barr, the Reverend Dr. Magrath reading the committal service. Next day came the offer from the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester of ‘a tomb in the Cathedral to Dorothea Beale,’ and on the 16th the funeral took place. Everything that could lend dignity and honour to the occasion was done. Those who were present can never forget the impression of that day.[367] The sombre beauty of the Cathedral in the November rain, the music, the well-ordered procession, the crowds, produced a sense of fitness for an occasion which was not merely one of grief. Rather was it an act of solemn thanksgiving for the long, faithful labours ended, an act of resignation through the heart and will of thousands of the life which had blessed them, to the continuous love of a merciful Creator. Many were there who held high position, in educational or municipal life, many friends and parents of pupils, many former teachers, and of course the whole staff. But the crowd which filled the great nave from end to end was made up for the most part of pupils past and present. Eight hundred girls still at the College came voluntarily, walking in grave silence in pairs from the station to the Cathedral. Only a small proportion of this crowd could be present in the Lady Chapel for the latter part of the service, but all when it was over filed quietly past the open grave surrounded by its home-made wreaths of flowers and laurel.

Meanwhile, in Cheltenham, those who were unable to come to Gloucester filled St. Matthew’s Church, where a service was held simultaneously with that in the Cathedral. At St. Paul’s Cathedral at the same time the dome was filled for a memorial service, which included a short address from the Bishop of Stepney. An old pupil present wrote of this:—

Services were also held at Bowdon Parish Church and at Sunderland. At Bakewell, on the Sunday after she died, thanks were offered for the life and work of Dorothea Beale.

There was widespread appreciation both spoken and written of Miss Beale’s life and work, with barely a discordant note. Many of the notices[102] gave a really striking impression both of herself and of what she had done for the cause of education. Apart from that work she did not care to be known; it is but an obvious truth that its greatness was dependent on the greatness of her character.

A number of old Cheltenham pupils were once asked what they considered the special result of the teaching they had received at the College. Their replies were to the most part to the effect that they had learned the worth of the strenuous life. They would perhaps have been nearer a complete statement of the truth had they said ‘an idea of Duty.’ For it was surely this—a consciousness of responsibility, a sense of stewardship, some perception of the ‘thanks and use’[103] owing for each[369] excellence that had been lent out to them—which was brought home by the teaching, both of word and life, of Dorothea Beale to all, even the youngest and least clever, who came within the circle of her influence. Through such knowledge of duty Miss Beale’s own idea of the ‘strenuous life’ might be perceived. Among the words most often on her lips, especially when speaking to teachers, were such as vivifying, energising, quickening, inspiration. She did not hesitate to say that to her all forms of life were a manifestation of God. Work was to her mind a privilege,—the active will, a Divine gift,—slothfulness was death. It was the defect of a great quality that she sometimes hasted overmuch, that she found it hard to wait in trifling matters, that she seemed even to exaggerate the importance of the College. She was not spared—she would not have asked to be spared—the inevitable sacrifice demanded of all genius, of all lives devoted to a cause. It was the sign of her self-consecration that in any great emergency, before any important decision, she was calm and full of patience. It should be remembered also that each generation has its own mission. To that of Dorothea Beale belonged especially the duty of crying to the careless daughters of England, ‘Rise up ye women that are at ease.’ To another it may be given to serve by waiting.

What, it is often asked, was the secret of her really marvellous influence? Personal magnetism she undoubtedly possessed, and that of a rare and abiding quality, a quick eye to perceive, and a touch which could evoke the best even in the most unlikely. But her influence and power for good came surely as much from what she would not do as from what she actually did for her children. Her strength lay in what she would herself call ‘passive activity.’ It was her claim[370] not to teach them so much as to lead them to the One Teacher, to bring them into such relationship with Him that they could hear His Voice. For that inner Voice which must at all costs be obeyed she bade them listen, with pure and undefiled conscience,—the ear of the soul. Thus each who tried to follow her teaching left the College not merely as a devoted pupil of Miss Beale, possibly even indifferent to her, but with a clearer consciousness of the ‘Light that lighteth every man,’ and the paramount necessity of walking in it.

Was the strenuous life all they learned at Cheltenham? It was doubtless not easy to tell the whole. The strength and greatness of their Head lay not alone in devising and carrying out important and detailed work. It lay also—though this was less readily seen—in an unwearied watchfulness of affection, in a sympathy never estranged, in active thoughtfulness, in a memory for all that was hopeful and fair in the lives and characters which came under her care. Remembering these, there comes ultimately to the mind the thought of how little she really cared for human judgment, just or unjust; how she would say that there was but one Voice to listen for, one word of approval worth earning, since the Lord Himself had said about a woman’s work, ‘She hath done what she could.’

[371]

CHAPTER XVI
LETTERS

Miss Beale enjoyed both receiving and writing letters. She kept a very large number, especially of those from old pupils. A letter which told of help or inspiration gained through the life at College would be put away, labelled in her own peculiar and favourite abbreviated way: ‘Sent 2 chēr me.’ She was a very ready and at times a very voluminous correspondent. She attended to all her letters herself, and answered all to which she intended to reply, not merely by return of post, but often the moment she received them. If her answer was of some importance she would keep it by her for a time, and often rewrite it before finally sending it. Her papers include a very large number of drafts and copies of letters which she sent. The chief part of her correspondence was done before the school hours began each morning, and she generally came to her place at 9 A.M. with her morning letters already answered. Where she found she could help by means of letters she would spare no pains nor time over them.

Perhaps Mrs. Charles Robinson received more than any one else. In 1878 Mrs. Robinson, then Miss Arnold, left Cheltenham to become a teacher at the Dulwich High School. She was at that time in a state[372] of great religious perplexity; dissatisfied with the teaching of the Plymouth Brethren, among whom she had been brought up, unable to accept that of the Church, she would not attend the services of either. During this time of gloom Miss Beale wrote every week to Miss Arnold a letter she might receive on Sunday morning, and all her life remained a constant correspondent. It is fitting that this chapter of letters should begin with some of those written to the ‘best-beloved child.’[104]

To Miss Arnold:—

In 1881 Miss Beale wrote to urge Miss Arnold to attend some addresses Mr. Wilkinson was about to give:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

[376]

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

The following letter, written in August 1888, refers to Miss Arnold’s appointment as Head-mistress of the Truro High School:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

[385]

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

There was one friend and old pupil, a writer for whose philosophical and poetical work in particular Miss Beale had a great admiration, who received many letters from her. A few extracts from these are given. To Miss ——:—

To the same:—

[392]

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

[393]

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

[394]

To the same:—

Miss Beale’s correspondence with her ‘children’ frequently concerned spiritual and mental difficulties of various kinds. One or two of the letters she wrote on such questions follow.

To one in religious doubt:—

To one who found danger and unreality in forms and ceremonies, and who wrote: ‘I feel I am cutting myself off from you in writing like this.’ She replied:—

To one who had written that she had to fight hard against pessimism caused by much unaccountable and apparently needless suffering. She answered:—

The letter which follows was written to a pupil who, while she was at school, did not personally know Miss Beale very well. A talk at a Guild meeting eleven years after she left revealed to Miss Beale’s penetrating eye some distress caused by disillusionment and disappointment. A fortnight afterwards she wrote:—

To one who had written of the ‘Intolerance of Church people’:—

The following was written to a former student, who after a time of great religious privilege had been assailed by special temptation:—

Among the letters are many to old pupils on the deaths of relations or friends. The next was written to Miss Alice Owen, now Mrs. Mark Collet, on the anniversary of her mother’s death:—

The next letter refers to the death of Mrs. Russell Gurney:—

Several other letters of a kindred nature follow.

To Miss Giles, on the death of her father:—

To Miss Susan Wood, on the death of her mother:—

To Miss Frances Crawley, afterwards Mrs. Wells:—

To an old pupil, on the death of her father:—

To Miss Strong, on the death of Miss Margaret Clarke:—

[402]

To Miss Rowand, on the death of her mother:—

To Miss Caines, just before her death:—

To a friend, on the death of Miss Caines:—

[403]

The next letter is to Mrs. Cooper,[105] a much-loved old pupil, who in 1902 lost a son, a promising young artist, and seven months later her husband through death:—

To the same:—

To the Misses Hibbert Ware, on the death of their sister:—

[404]

To Mrs. Mace, on the death of her husband:—

Miss Beale wrote several letters, from which extracts are given, to Miss Belcher during her last illness.

The following was written after the Head-mistresses’ Conference on October 8 and 9 at Oxford in 1898:—

A day or two later she wrote:—

The next alludes to a proposed visit of Miss Beale to Miss Belcher:—

After this visit Miss Belcher wrote:—

Miss Beale’s reply was:—

The next letter was written after an operation Miss Belcher had undergone:—

Miss Belcher replied:—

Shortly after this Miss Belcher wrote herself on an anticipated visit from another physician:—

The following is the last letter Miss Beale wrote to Miss Belcher:—

Enclosed in this letter were some verses from Ken’s ‘Midnight Hymn,’ with the words, ‘I thought you might like this if awake at night.’

After Miss Belcher’s death on December 15, 1898, Miss Beale wrote to Miss Strong: ‘Three of my noble-hearted friends gone so lately—Miss Buss, Miss Clarke, and Marian Belcher. The road to the Dark Tower gets lonely, but we look beyond.’

A few letters on general subjects are given. The first of these was written to Miss Susan Wood, in 1897, in reply to an inquiry about women teachers:—

The following extract, from a letter to Miss Sturge in October 1902, deals with the developments of the College:—

The following was written to Bishop Fraser of Manchester, who had publicly referred with approbation to the saying of Thucydides, that ‘that woman was most to be admired who was least spoken of whether for good or evil’:—

To Mrs. Ashley Smith, at that date Miss Lucy Hall, a relation of Bishop Fraser’s, on the same subject:—

To Miss Laurie, after reading Pasteur’s Life:—

To Miss Nixon, on Henry George’s Progress and Poverty:—

To Mr. Coates after a lecture he had given at Cheltenham:—

To Mrs. Rix:—

To Sir Joshua Fitch, after the death of Miss Buss:—

Miss Beale wrote but little about herself, but in her correspondence with an intimate friend, she would[415] give glimpses of her own personal life, even of her doings, as well as of her thought and reading. Her letters to Miss Amy Giles are the most interesting from this point of view, covering as they do the last period of her life. Some extracts from these are given:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

In the summer holidays of 1898 Miss Beale stayed with Miss Giles at Bonchurch. They afterwards visited Marlborough College and Savernake Forest together,[416] parting at Marlborough station. Miss Beale wrote after this to Miss Giles:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

To the same:—

[417]

To the same. Written when there was some idea of Miss Giles living abroad:—

To the same. After alluding to the death of Mrs. Moyle:—

To the same. Speaking of the South African War:—

To the same. Also about the South African War:—

To the same. Miss Giles had sent a paper for the Magazine:—

To the same. On recovering from bronchitis:—

To the same. Towards the end of the Easter holidays,[418] when she had been confined to her room with a bronchial attack:—

To the same:—

In the summer holidays of 1905 Miss Giles accompanied Miss Beale to Oeynhausen. The two following letters concern the preparation made for this visit to the German baths.

On returning from Germany Miss Beale went to Hyde Court for her niece’s wedding, and wrote on arrival to Miss Giles.

A letter followed describing the wedding, and concluding thus:—

[419]

To the same:—

In September 1905 Miss Beale’s letters speak of exhaustion, but others wrote of her that she was busy, full of energy, and ‘does not seem to tire.’

To the same. Speaking of her visit to London in the Christmas holidays:—

The weakness to which Miss Beale alluded was destined to continue, but amid the decay of natural health long-rooted hopes grew strong and blossomed afresh. But a few weeks before her own death she wrote to a friend who had recently lost her mother:—

[420]

APPENDIX A, Page 28.

A lady who attended Dr. Bernays’ German classes with Miss Beale has interesting recollections of her. She remembers her as in appearance ‘very fair and slight and interesting looking,’ with a quiet dignity and attraction about her which gave her an influence; one remarkable instance of this may be told.

Dorothea and Anna Beale were once absent from the German class on its first meeting for a new term. Dr. Bernays said they should read Faust, and accordingly all the pupils brought copies of Faust to the next class. When all were seated, Dorothea stood up and said quietly and respectfully that she thought Faust objectionable reading for young girls, and suggested some other book. Dr. Bernays looked just a little annoyed, but listened quite kindly. He said it was a pity the books had been bought, but put it to the class what should be done. Such was Miss Beale’s influence that all decided to submit to her judgment.

APPENDIX B, Page 74.
TITLES OF CHAPTERS IN MISS BEALE’S TEXTBOOK 1858.

[421]

APPENDIX C, Page 75.
A PAGE OF MISS BEALE’S SELF-EXAMINATION 1858.

APPENDIX D, p. 90
PROSPECTUS OF THE CHELTENHAM COLLEGE FOR YOUNG LADIES
November 1, 1853

[422]

APPENDIX E, Page 332.
Edward Beale.

The Reverend Edward Beale, a member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, died at Mazagon, Bombay Presidency, on February 3, 1894. He was a younger brother to whom Miss Beale was much attached. His early promise of a brilliant career was cut short by severe illness while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. For years he was wholly incapacitated, but on recovering partial health he received deacon’s orders, and before joining St. John’s Society, worked for a time at Warminster. Here he gave the addresses afterwards published under the title of The Mind of Christ.

From Cowley Mr. Beale was sent to the Society’s Mission in Bombay. He was much beloved and looked up to by those among whom he worked. At the time of his death (which occurred after a very short illness) he was engaged to read a paper at the coming Diocesan Conference on ‘The Necessity of Faith in the Church as the Fullest Possible Manifestation of the Life of God in Creation.’ His funeral was attended by a crowd of the poorest poor.

The following lines in her brother Edward’s handwriting, found among Miss Beale’s papers, seem to be undoubtedly original, and to tell the history of his consecrated life:—

APPENDIX F, Page 368.

The following notice by an old pupil, now a head-mistress, appeared in the Times of November 17:—

The following extract is from a notice in the Guardian of November 21, 1906:—

[426]

[427]

INDEX

• Address to Parents, 155.
• Aitken, Miss V., 258.
• Aldrich-Blake, Dr., 357, 362, 363.
• Alston, Miss, 30, 40, 62, 79, 97, 98.
• Alverstone, Lord, 340.
• Ambleside, 333, 388.
• Andrews, Miss A., 322, 323, 340, 344, 354, 358, 359, 361.
• Angélique, La Mère, 226.
• Arnold, Miss C., 161, 173, 246, 267, 268, 280, 282, 283, 372-389.
• Asquith, Mr., 340, 341.
• Assistant Mistresses’ Association, 294.
• Astell, Mrs., 252.
• Austin’s, St. (boarding-house), 247.
• Autobiography, Miss Beale’s, 3-13.
• Balliol College, 330.
• Barlow, Sir T., 123.
• Barnes, 66, 95, 96, 99.
• Barrett, Mrs., 79.
• —— Professor, 187, 198.
• Barry, Canon, 168.
• Bartholomew, Mrs., 7.
• Bath, 343.
• Batten, Mrs., 240.
• Battenberg, Princess Henry of, 334.
• Beale, Anna, 123.
• —— Dorothea, childhood, 1-9;
• schools, 9-14;
• home life, 15, 16, 60-66;
• Queen’s College, 20-35;
• Principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, 98, 115;
• as teacher, 43, 45, 127, 254-275;
• early difficulties, 128;
• Blue-book, 138;
• as principal, 276-285;
• religious faith, 73-89, 187-202, 264, 268;
• honours, 319, 323, 324, 336, 339;
• letters, 150, 161, 162, 164, 192, 196, 197, 221, 239, 246, 251, 255, 266, 267, 268, 272, 273, 280-285, 287-290, 292, 296, 304-310, 314, 328, 332, 341, 342, 350, 357, 371-419.
• Beale, Edward, 15, 130, Appendix E.
• —— Eliza, 8, 13, 66, 79, 338.
• —— Henry, 1.
• —— Miles, 1, 2, 6, 7, 20, 38, 39, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 74, 76, 132.
• —— Mrs., 2, 95, 107, 130.
• Bedford College, 135.
• —— Duchess of, 347.
• —— High School, 352.
• Belcher, Miss, 152, 182, 265, 284, 352, 404-408, 416.
• Bell, Mr., J.P., 95, 100, 102, 107.
• Bellairs, Canon, 82, 86, 89, 97, 98, 102-107, 168, 238.
• Bennett, W. Sterndale, 23, 30.
• Benson, Archbishop, 287, 290, 388.
• —— Mrs., 287, 292, 400, 419.
• —— Miss, 352.
• Bernays, Professor, 23, Appendix A.
• Berridge, Miss, 343.
• Bidder, Miss, 343.
• Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 135.
• Blackwood, Lady Victoria, 329.
• Blenkarne, Mrs., 30, 79.
• Bloemfontein, 301.
• Boarding-houses, 89, 170-175.
• Body, Canon, 182, 249, 289, 291, 330, 386.
• Bonchurch, 331, 415.
• Boyd, Dean, 85, 94, 131.
• Bradfield, 333.
• Brancker, Mr. J. H., 112, 120-124, 165, 227, 228.
• Brasseur, Professor, 23, 28.
• Bray, Mrs., 13.
• Brewer, Professor, 23, 24.
• —— Miss, 94, 107, 113, 123, 131.
• Bromby, Bishop, 82, 86, 94, 115, 119, 132.
• —— Rev. G., 222, 224.
• Brown, Miss M., 276, 314.
• [428]—— Dr. Morton, 168.
• Bruce, Miss, 243, 342.
• Bryant, Mrs., 348.
• Bryce, Sir J., 141, 325.
• —— Commission, 294, 325.
• Buckoll, Miss, 68.
• Budge, Professor, 355.
• Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 336.
• Burney, Fanny, 83.
• Burrows, Mrs., 237.
• Burton, Canon, 37.
• Buss, Miss, 23, 24, 25, 27, 61, 123, 133, 135, 143, 145, 168, 169, 172, 174, 292, 293, 321, 323, 331, 382, 408.
• Caines, Miss, 170, 291, 338, 402.
• Caird, Dr. Edward, 378, 392.
• Cambray House, 90, 92, 108, 126.
• —— —— School, 246, 247.
• Cambridge, 330.
• Cardew, Dr., 359.
• Carpenter, Dr., 135.
• —— Mr. Lant, 413.
• Carter, Miss, 404, 407.
• Casterton, 33, 35, 36-61, 63, 66, 100, 175.
• Catherine, St., of Siena, 226.
• Charles, Mr. Justice, 173.
• Chart, the, 126, 261.
• Cheltenham, 66, 81, 82, 291, 337.
• —— College, 86.
• Child-Study Association, 295.
• Child, Dr., 235.
• Church Schools’ Company, 294.
• Clark, Rev. S., 24.
• Clarke, Miss Margaret, 180, 183, 282, 330, 331, 401, 408.
• Clewer, 134, 251.
• Close, Dean, 84, 85, 89, 100, 103, 131.
• Clough, Miss, 347.
• Coates, Mr., 411, 412.
• Cock, Rev. T. A., 24, 26, 29.
• Collet, Mrs. Mark, 400.
• Colson, M. Théodore, 112.
• Complin, Dorothea M. See Mrs. Beale.
• —— Elizabeth, 2, 5.
• Compton, Bishop, Lord Alwyne, 234.
• Comyn, Dr. S. E., 87, 98, 105.
• Cooper, Mrs., 403.
• Corbet, Rev. R., 196, 197.
• Corbett, Miss, 241.
• Cornwallis, Archbishop, 3.
• Cornwallis, Caroline F., 2, 4, 5.
• —— Mrs., 2, 3.
• —— Rev., 2, 3.
• Coulson, Mrs., 113.
• Council, Ladies’ College, 163, 168.
• Cowan Bridge, 41.
• Cowley House, 330.
• Crawford, Annette Bear, 309.
• Creighton, Bishop, 242.
• Crosby Hall, 6, 11, 12.
• Curling, Dr. and Mrs., 96, 105.
• Daldy, Dr., 73.
• Davenport, Mrs., 23.
• Davies, Miss E., 137, 140, 143, 145.
• Davis, Rev. L., 17.
• Day, Miss E., 404, Appendix F.
• —— Mr. Philip, 242.
• Degree, Edinburgh University, 339.
• De Morgan, Mr., 135.
• Denton, Rev. W., 42, 73, 76.
• Diary, Miss Beale’s, 70, 79, 105, 107, 181, 185, 189, 191, 195, 233, 255, 292, 330.
• Dobson, Rev. W., 87.
• —— Mr. Austin, 340.
• Dove, Miss, 327.
• Draper, Miss, 329.
• Drummond, Miss, 407.
• Dufferin, Lord, 329.
• Dunn, Mr. W., 168.
• Durham, 343.
• —— University, 324.
• Eaton, Miss, 123.
• Edinburgh, 339, 341.
• Edmonds, Miss, 284.
• Eliot, George, 379.
• Ellicott, Bishop, 89, 169, 206, 234, 349, 392.
• Elwall, Miss, 66, 79, 96.
• Endowed Schools’ Commission, 133, 136-145.
• Evans, Archdeacon, 42, 50.
• Examinations, 114, 124, 146, 153, 231.
• Fairbairn, Dr., 326.
• Fallières, M., 323.
• Fauconberg House, 169, 170, 291.
• Fermi, Miss, 360.
• Fielden, Mrs., 319.
• [429]Fitch, Sir Joshua, 137, 138, 167, 284, 413.
• Fitzmaurice, Colonel, 87.
• Fliedner, Pastor, 66.
• Flower, Sir William, 319.
• Fontenay-aux-Roses, 322, 324.
• Forster, Mr., 138.
• Frankfort, 334.
• Fraser, Bishop, 409.
• —— Mrs., 129, 160.
• Frederick, the Empress, 81, 333.
• Freedom of Cheltenham, 336.
• French, Bishop, 330.
• Froebel Society, 294.
• Galloway, Miss, 342.
• Garnier-Gentilhomme, Mme., 320.
• Garrett, Miss, 135.
• Gedge, Rev. W. W., 168.
• George III., 82.
• Gilbert, Miss E., 23.
• Giles, Miss A., 344, 415-419.
• Girls’ Public Day-School Company, 123, 145, 166.
• Girton, 146.
• Gladstone, Mr., 134.
• —— Miss H., 305.
• Gleichen, Countess F., 334.
• Gloucester, 335, 367.
• —— Dean of, 219, 366.
• Gore, Miss, 360, 362, 399, 410.
• Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, 18, 19.
• Grahamstown, 301.
• Grant, Sir Ludovic, 340.
• Granville, Lord, 168.
• Green, Mr. T. H., 138.
• Greene, Mrs., 58, 102.
• Gresham Lectures, 12.
• Gretton, Miss, 352.
• Grey, Mrs. William, 140, 141, 145, 166, 172, 241, 304, 308, 383.
• Griffith, Mrs., 218.
• Grzywacz, Fräulein, 344, 360.
• Guernsey, 350.
• Guild, the, 213-221.
• —— —— Plays, 332, 355.
• —— —— Settlement, 221-225.
• Gull, Sir William, 123.
• Gurney, Mrs. Russell, 197, 198, 330, 387, 400.
• —— Rev. Alfred, 387.
• —— Miss M., 168.
• Guyon, Mme., 226.
• Hackett, Miss Maria, 7, 146.
• Hall, Dr. Stanley, 295.
• Harraden, Miss B., 205.
• Harris, Dr., 325.
• —— Hon. and Rev. C., 95.
• Harrison, Miss J., 152, 205.
• Hartland, Mr. N., 87, 93-95, 105, 120, 122.
• Hay, Mrs., 239.
• Hayes, Mrs., 24.
• Head-mistresses’ Association, 292, 293.
• —— Conference, 351, 404, 418.
• Helen’s, St., Church, Bishopsgate, 2, 8.
• —— —— (boarding-house), 170, 247.
• Hibbert-Ware, the Misses, 403.
• Hilda, St., 226, 234.
• Hilda’s, St., Association, 243.
• —— —— College, Cheltenham, 177, 227, 231, 235.
• —— —— East, 242, 331, 342, 356.
• —— —— Hall, Oxford, 235-240, 324, 388.
• —— —— Work, 243, 250, 251, 252.
• Hinton, James, 182, 186.
• History of the Ladies’ College, 205.
• Hitchin, 146.
• Holden, Rev. H. A., 87.
• Holland, Canon Francis, 125, 284.
• Hopkins, Miss Ellice, 186, 307, 308.
• House of Education, 333.
• Hullah, Mr. John, 23.
• Hutchinson, Canon, 338.
• Hyde Court, 1, 130, 182, 183, 185, 418.
• Illingworth, Rev. Dr., 330, 347.
• Ince, H., Outlines, 71, 73, 104.
• International Congress of Education, 320.
• Jackson, Bishop, 67.
• —— Rev. T., 69.
• Jervis, Rev. C., 84.
• Jex-Blake, Dean, 161, 167.
• —— Miss, 23.
• Johnson, Miss A., 410.
• —— Sir S., 345.
• Jowett, Dr., 329, 392.
• Jubilee of Ladies’ College, 348.
• [430]Kaiserwerth, 64, 66-69.
• Kensington Society, 156.
• Ker, Miss F., 215, 239, 346.
• Keyl, Miss, 349.
• Kindergarten, 91, 244-246, 248.
• King, Miss, 23.
• Kingsley, Rev. C., 23, 24.
• Kirby Lonsdale, 40.
• Kitchin, Dean, 234, 238.
• Knight, Professor, 187.
• Kynaston, Canon, 168.
• Ladies’ College, 81, 82, 86, 109-130, 135, 157;
• new buildings, 158-163;
• constitution, 167, 169;
• extensions, organ, etc., 211, 212;
• Princess Hall, 331;
• science wing, 348.
• Lady Margaret Hall, 235, 237.
• Laing, Rev. D., 17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 135.
• Lancaster, Mrs., 62-65, 67, 95, 97, 102, 250, 303.
• Lane, Miss, 362.
• Laurie, Miss, 410.
• —— Professor, 341.
• Leckhampton, 169, 333, 386.
• Lewis, Miss Wolseley, 266, 284, 332.
• Lloyd, Mrs., 112.
• Loan Fund, 230, 231.
• London, Bishop of, 248.
• —— Institution, 11.
• —— University, 338.
• Londonderry, Lord, 348.
• Longe, Mr. F. D., 168.
• Louch, Miss, 295, 387.
• Lowe, Mr., 165.
• Lumby, Miss A., 294, 346.
• Lyttelton, Lord, 168.
• M’Causland, General, 168.
• Mace, Mrs., 115, 404.
• Mackenzie, Prebendary, 6, 7, 42, 72, 76, 126, 146.
• Mackintosh, Sir J., 24.
• Magazine, Ladies’ College, 186, 203-210.
• Magrath, Rev. Dr., 348, 366.
• Manchester, 136.
• Mangnall’s Questions, 141, 340.
• Margaret’s, St., Bethnal Green, 241.
• Maria Grey Training College, 176.
• Marlborough, 416.
• Marriott, Mr. T., 168.
• Martin, Miss, 23, 407.
• Mason, Canon, 290, 305.
• Mason, Miss C., 295, 333.
• Maurice, Professor F. D., 20-24, 27, 28.
• Mayfield House, 225, 240, 241.
• Medd, Canon, 233.
• Mellish, Miss, 350.
• Merchant Taylors’ School, 15.
• Merritt, Mrs. Lea, 346.
• Michaelis, Mme., 245.
• Middleton, Mr. J., 162, 168.
• —— Mrs., 186.
• Milner, Miss E., 136.
• Missionary Study Circle, 301.
• Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, 304.
• Monroe, Mrs. E. H., 320.
• Monteagle, Lady, 24.
• Moyle, Mrs., 243, 419.
• Mugliston, Miss H., 219.
• Mulcaster, Miss, 94.
• Murray, Miss, 18, 19.
• Music-teaching, 110-112.
• National Education Association, U.S.A., 324.
• —— Vigilance Association, 308.
• Newcastle, 342.
• Newman, Miss C., 223, 224, 240, 310.
• —— Miss M., 176, 177, 227, 411.
• —— Francis, 195.
• —— J. H., 195.
• Nicolay, Rev. C. F., 25, 28, 114.
• Nightingale, Miss F., 67, 135.
• Nixon, Miss, 320, 411.
• Norman, Mr., 336.
• Northcote, Sir S., 138.
• Oakeley, Sir H. E., 248.
• Oeynhausen, 69, 344, 357.
• Officier d’Académie, 323.
• Oliver, Rev. J., 64.
• Ormerod, Miss, 340.
• Osborne, Mrs., 342.
• Overwork, 153, 278.
• Owen, Mrs. J., 168, 174, 186, 206, 213, 298, 299, 303.
• —— Mr. S., 124, 125.
• Paidologist, The, 295.
• Parents’ Educational Union, 295.
• Paris, 320, 329.
• Parratt, Sir W., 211.
• Parry, Miss, 26.
• [431]Pearce, Colonel, 175.
• Phillipps, Miss L. March, 168.
• Piper, Miss, 136.
• Plumptre, Dean, 23, 26, 29, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 42, 56, 57, 72, 95.
• Plunket, Mr. W. L., 329.
• Procter, Mrs., 90, 92.
• —— Miss, 90, 92, 93, 94, 113, 115, 116, 164.
• —— Adelaide, 23.
• Pullen, Professor, 12.
• Pusey, Dr., 134.
• Queen’s College, 19-35, 131, 135.
• Radley, 330.
• Ramabai, Pundita, 299, 300, 301, 305.
• Reid, Mr., 135.
• —— Miss M., 410.
• Rein, Dr., 387.
• Retreats, 286-291.
• Reynolds, Mrs., 243.
• —— Miss, 97.
• Richardson, Miss M., 78.
• Riddle, Rev. A. E., 132.
• Ridley, Miss A., 169, 293.
• Rix, Mr. and Mrs., 363.
• Robertson, Rev. F., 86.
• Robinson, Mrs. C., 221, 255, 352. See Miss C. Arnold.
• Rooke, Mr. T. M., 168.
• Rowand, Miss, 359, 361, 362, 402.
• Rowley, Miss, 33.
• Rücker, Sir A., 340, 341.
• Ruskin, Mr., 136, 137;
• letters, 207-212, 314-318.
• Russell, Major-General, 334.
• Ryan, Sir E., 168.
• Saintsbury, Professor, 341.
• Salazaro, Signora Zampini, 320.
• Samuelson, Lady, 320.
• Saumerez, Lord de, 89.
• Scholarships, 175, 176, 230, 239.
• Self-Examination Questions, 73, Appendix C.
• Sélincourt, Mr. de, 416.
• Selwyn, Miss, 176.
• Sewell, Miss E., 135, 136, 358, 415.
• —— Mrs., 15.
• Shannon, Mr. J. J., 347.
• Shepheard, Rev. H., 53, 57, 58, 96, 99, 103, 105.
• —— Mrs., 58.
• Shields, Mr. F., 315, 416.
• Shireff, Miss, 145, 305.
• Shorthouse, Mr. S., 209.
• Simeon, Rev. C., 84.
• Sinclair, Miss M., 205.
• Smith, Mrs. Ashley, 215-218, 411.
• —— Rev. Charles, 330.
• —— Professor G. A., 342.
• Soames, Miss, 227.
• Social Science Congress, 138, 146, 147, 155, 156, 166, 409.
• Somervell, Mrs. A., 320.
• Somerville College, 235.
• Soulsby, Mrs., 290.
• —— Miss, 327, 328.
• Stanley, Lady, of Alderley, 24.
• —— Hon. Lyulph, 321.
• Stanton, Rev. V. H., 289, 290, 292.
• Stepney, Bishop of, 356, 367.
• Stevenson, the Misses, 342.
• Stirling, Miss, 345, 346.
• Stoke, 190.
• Storrar, Dr., 144, 168.
• Storrs, Mr., 146.
• Story, Dr., 342.
• Strettel, Rev. A. B., 25.
• Strong, Miss L., 301, 328, 338, 401, 404, 408.
• Stroud, 1, 388.
• Stubbs, Bishop, 238.
• Sturge, Miss, 360, 361, 365, 408.
• Sudeley Castle, 392.
• Swanwick, Miss A., 393.
• Symonds. Rev. W., 6.
• Synge, Miss B., 205.
• Tait, Miss, 419.
• Tallents, Mrs., 349.
• Teachers’ Guild, 294.
• Temple, Bishop, 138.
• Tennyson, Alfred, 19, 137.
• Textbook of General History, 66, 70, 73, 95, 99, 104, 261, Appendix B.
• Thompson, Miss, 212.
• Tiesset, M. and Mademoiselle, 113.
• Training of Teachers, 29, 86, 151, 176, 228, 229, 231, 246, 249, 277, 289, 409.
• Trench, Dean, 23, 24, 67, 95.
• Trimmer, James, 3.
• —— Sarah, 3.
• Tuke, Sir John Batty, 340.
• Twining, Miss, 24, 65.
• [432]Vaccination, 335.
• Verrall, Mr. H., 165, 167, 168.
• —— Miss A., 241.
• Victoria, Queen, 334, 338, 367.
• Vincent, Miss, 58, 99.
• Wantage, 13, 299.
• Wardell, Miss, 23.
• Webb, Bishop, 302.
• —— Mr. S., 387.
• Wedgwood, Mrs., 25, 43.
• —— Miss, 22, 350.
• Welldon, Miss, 245.
• Wellington, Duke of, 83, 108.
• Wells, Mrs., 239, 403.
• Westcott, Bishop, 206.
• Weston, Miss Agnes, 310.
• Widgery, Mr., 321.
• Wilderspin, Miss, 246.
• Wilkinson, Bishop, 186, 281, 286, 374, 377, 378, 380, 382, 383, 385.
• Wilson, Rev. C., 40, 41, 58, 102.
• —— Mr. E. T., 168.
• Winkworth, Miss C., 168.
• Withiel, Mrs., 294.
• Wood, Lady Page, 24.
• —— Miss S., 152, 400, 408.
• Woodchester, 331, 338.
• Woodhouse, Mrs., 354, 404.
• Wordsworth, Miss, 347.
• Work and Play, 326-329.
• Working Men’s College, Cheltenham, 297.
• Worsley, Rev. E., 335, 357.
• Wright, Dr., 319.
• York, 343.

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