“We were all so full of hope at first and are much disappointed that relief has not come; ... I think, perhaps, you may be specially suffering for one, that her faith may be once more awakened. Every sufferer thus ‘lifted up’ does in a measure draw the hearts of others to Him through whom we are able to reveal the power of faith.”
To another she wrote:—
“I have just heard of this fresh trouble. Surely you must be intended to do some work for others specially needing heart’s blood. This paper was put into my hands just as I heard of your fresh disappointment and anxiety.”
The mediatorial and purifying purpose of suffering is an idea frequently found in her writing. The South African War was a great burden on her mind. In 1900 she wrote:—
“It is difficult to keep up one’s active powers with this nightmare; one is so sure that all suffering is intended to be purifying and we must glorify God in the fires.”
Dorothea Beale always had a great objection to desultory work, and though she of necessity touched many interests wider than those of Cheltenham, she kept the main part of her time and strength for her own particular work. Her association with various enterprises was always greatly valued, and her work and influence were felt to be a great help. Some of the educational work in which she was specially interested and took a part was represented by the Head-Mistresses’ Association, the Teachers’ Guild, the Froebel Society, the Child Study Association, the Parents’ National Union, and Sunday Schools. She would send delegates from the College to consider any new educational system. A local institution that always claimed her sympathy was a Working Men’s College started at Cheltenham and greatly helped by her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Owen. She read a paper there on one occasion, on self-support and self-government.
“I do not think there are many,” she said, “belonging to this College, who could not pay a few shillings annually. Self-denial adds value to energy.... Everybody does not agree with me. Some think you will misunderstand—think we do not want to help. I do not think you will; to judge by my own feelings I like to be independent.”
Then she spoke of the early difficulties at the Ladies’ College and the lack of money during her first years there.
“I am quite sure,” she went on, “that our College would not have been what it is if we had had money to fall back upon. I might myself have left the helm and gone to sit quietly in the cabin while the vessel drifted on to the rocks.”
Dorothea Beale kept throughout life a youthfulness of outlook which made her able to enthuse over things that strongly attracted her attention and interest. One day some one brought to her on a lily-leaf a dragon-fly emerging from the pupa. To her mind, as to Mrs. Gatty’s, this became a symbol of the resurrection. All that summer the college heard much of the thought it had suggested, and many were the “transformations” witnessed. She wrote a paper—“Is Death the End?” and wanted to read it at a little mission maintained by her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Owen. They would not allow her to do so, though she was perfectly sure she would be able to interest the poor people. This reminds the writer of a similar incident. A lady had given what she believed to be a thrilling lecture on the dragon-fly to a number of East End girls. They listened most attentively and seemed greatly interested. But the lecturer’s self-satisfaction received something of a shock when at the end she heard one girl say to another in a very Cockney accent, “Why, it’s nothing but a fly, after all!” Probably Mr. and Mrs. Owen were right.