“Teachers so able and energetic and successful,” said he, “have a right to the greatest consideration and the very best arrangements for teaching. A Ladies’ College so distinguished, second to none in England, has a right to every advantage that can be secured for it: a right to be lodged in a building of its own: a building perfect in its internal arrangements, and outwardly of some architectural attractiveness: one that should be a College and should look like a College.”
At this meeting those who desired extension carried the day, and soon the erection of the new buildings was begun. On Lady Day, 1873, the College moved into the new building. So quietly and unobtrusively was this done, that hardly a single half-hour of lessons was lost. Many extensions followed, including the addition of art and music wings, and kindergarten rooms. Those who were at the College in those days were familiar with the continual noise of building; in 1882 it ceased: “after this the sound of the hammer was not heard for nearly four years.” Dorothea Beale’s policy of building was a sound one: it was to plan for extensions long before they were necessary, but to build little by little as the premises were needed and money was ready for the purpose.
About this time many questions arose that had to be settled once and for all. One was whether the College was to be simply a local day school, or an institution for the furthering of women’s higher education generally: another was the government of the College and the defining of the Principal’s powers: a third was whether the boarding-houses should become an intrinsic part of the College. Around all these questions storms arose and the Principal began to feel that in leaving Cambray House she had left behind her peace and happiness.
The College was finally incorporated under the Companies’ Acts, and the government of it revised and radically altered. The Principal’s powers were more clearly defined, and the Council decided to take over full responsibility for the boarding-houses.
About this last decision she wrote to her friend, Miss Arnold, the headmistress of the Truro High School:—
“I think I told you that after many years, I have prevailed upon our Council to take the whole risk of the boarding-houses—the pecuniary risk is of course very great, and in case of war or sudden depression I don’t exactly see how we should meet it, but one must have risks and we find the moral risks of not taking pecuniary ones so great that we decided for the latter—and indeed we had to pay pretty considerable sums in law expenses and to get rid of unjust claims too. We could not prove that these ladies had not lost money, if they said they had—and if they were bad managers they did perhaps lose—and an outcry was raised that we ruined poor ladies.”
Of her attitude towards a Principal’s position and powers, part of a letter from Miss Buss to Miss Ridley gives some idea.
“I had a long and grave talk with Miss Beale, who counsels fight, but not on any personal ground. She says: ‘Resign if there is interference with the mistress’s liberty of action. That is a public question and one of public interest.’ She was so good and loving: she was so tender: and she is so wise and calm. She told me some of her own worries and said that sometimes she quivered in every nerve at her own Council meetings.”
At the end of these various controversies it was realised that the College could not be a merely local institution, but had a great future before it, and was destined to play a very important part in the higher education of women from every part of the country.
I must not close this chapter without giving a brief account of the much-loved Cambray House, in which the Ladies’ College started. For a time after the College left it was a boys’ school, but in 1889, Miss Beale had the chance of re-purchasing it for £2,000 and using it as a boarding-house and overflow school for girls awaiting admission to the College. In 1895 it was enlarged, and in 1897 the Principal, by Deed of Gift, made it over to the College, though she still ran it on her own account. Not until 1906 was it actually reckoned part of the College. This is only one of the many instances of how Dorothea Beale spent or invested her own money for the growth and welfare of the College.