It was near the end of November before Dorothea made her final decision to send in her resignation. She had not time to carry out this decision before she received the following note from the Committee:—
“On your last interview with the Committee you implied an intention of resigning in case certain alterations should not be made by the Committee....
“The Committee are of opinion that, under the circumstances, it would be better that your connection with the school should cease after Christmas next, they paying you a quarter’s salary in advance.”
This note was received shortly before the Christmas holidays.
It is easier to imagine than to describe the effect of this summary dismissal on a highly sensitive girl, whose actions had throughout been prompted by a sincere desire for the good of the school. It is difficult to endure the sense of failure in youth before one has had assurance of one’s own powers. Again at this time her father’s sympathetic letters, reminding her of the high motives with which she had undertaken this work, were a great comfort to her. In after years Dorothea Beale acknowledged the value of this year at Casterton. No life is perhaps complete without its times of failure, as she must have felt her year at Casterton to be. For the world is full of men and women who fail, and it is only by personal knowledge of their experience that we can sympathise with them and help them to rise above it.
Many, however, appreciated the good work Dorothea Beale did at Casterton, and her quiet and steady persistence in what she felt to be right were not without their permanent influence on the school. Her remembrance of this school was a source of pain to her, and yet, as the years went on, she felt how much she owed to her experiences there. In The Times of November 19, 1906, there is an extract from a letter by Canon A. D. Burton, Casterton Vicarage, Kirkby Lonsdale.
“I have read with interest your account of Miss Beale’s life. I think, however, it is possible that it may give an erroneous impression with regard to her connection with Casterton, and it may be of interest if I mention that I happen to know something of the feelings she entertained towards the school. Rather more than a year ago she wrote to say that it had long been in her mind to do something for the school in grateful remembrance of the benefit which her connection with it had been to her, and this wish finally took shape in the founding of a scholarship to Cheltenham, and the first Casterton-Beale Scholar is at the present time in residence at that college.
“The Casterton Clergy Daughters’ School, like most other schools of long standing, has a past which is not to be compared with its present. That is no disparagement to it, but the reverse. Its present state is one of high efficiency, but it is interesting that it was not on this account only that Miss Beale wished her name to be always connected with it, but because she felt herself in debt to it. ‘I owe much to it,’ were her words. A few months ago she also presented to the school an oil-painting of herself which was hung in the entrance hall.”
She did not leave Casterton, however, without some acknowledgment on the part of the authorities and others that her work and character had been appreciated. It must also have been a solace to her when Dr. Plumptre, hearing of her resignation, at once wrote and spoke of the possibility of a mathematical tutorship at Queen’s College.