Dorothea Beale, who was born on March 21, 1831, was fortunate in her parentage and early environment. Her father, Miles Beale, was a surgeon who had been trained at Guy’s Hospital. He came of a family of literary traditions, and he himself was a man of wide interests and learning. Her mother, Dorothea Margaret Complin, was of Huguenot extraction and belonged to a family distinguished for its ability, counting among its members several “advanced” women. Mrs. Beale’s aunt, Mrs. Cornwallis, the wife of a rector of Wittersham, Kent, was a woman of considerable intellect and great spiritual gifts. She wrote several books of a devotional character. One of these, “Preparation for the Lord’s Supper with a Companion to the Altar,” contains much excellent advice to ladies on the use and abuse of speech, the regulation of time, indolence, desire of admiration, sickness, etc., breathing a devout and earnest spirit, and revealing in the writer an attitude of great severity towards herself. This little book, with its old-fashioned appearance, seemed to me, as I read it, full of the spirit which animated Mrs. Cornwallis’s celebrated great-niece.
Her daughter, Caroline Frances Cornwallis, was a remarkable woman. Her published letters are extremely interesting, and deal with a variety of subjects, Italy, Education, Religion, Science, Philosophy. She wrote a number of books in the series called “Small Books on Great Subjects”. These were published anonymously, and were considered to be the work of a man, at a time when the known authorship of a woman would have damned any book. Miss Cornwallis often used to laugh up her sleeve at the appreciation of critics who would undoubtedly have criticised her work unfavourably had they known it was that of a woman. She had a frail body, a courageous mind, and a devout spirit. At times she adopted a cynical attitude towards men’s low estimate of the intellectual powers of her sex. “Every man, you know, thinks he has a prescriptive right to be better informed than a woman, unless he has science enough to see that the said woman is up with him and therefore must know something.” This was, however, just a strain of bitterness bred in a brilliant, active mind handicapped by lack of facilities for real education, and restricted on every side by the bounds of custom and prejudice.
These two women undoubtedly influenced the future head of Cheltenham. Mrs. Beale’s sister, Elizabeth Complin, had lived for some time with the Cornwallises and was the medium through whom the young Beales came into contact with their ideas and ideals.
Dorothea Beale was also fortunate in being one of a large family. The spirit of the home seems to have been one of love and service. There was also a strong intellectual atmosphere, in which the children learnt early to love the best in literature. Her father would often read aloud to his children extracts from Shakespeare and other great writers, and from him and her mother Dorothea began early to imbibe a love of learning, and to find in literature some revelation of the great spiritual realities.
Dorothea’s education and that of the older members of the family was at first under the guidance of a governess. It must have been quite early in life that she received her first inkling of the incompetence of teachers of that day. She remembered a rapid succession of teachers whom Mrs. Beale was compelled to dismiss on account of their inability to teach. There appears to have been only one satisfactory governess, a Miss Wright, who was excellent: after she left, the girls were sent to school.
“It was a school,” says Dorothea Beale in her autobiography, “considered much above the average for sound instruction: our mistresses were women who had read and thought: they had taken pains to arrange various schemes of knowledge: yet what miserable teaching we had in many subjects: history was learned by committing to memory little manuals, rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the Lamentations of King Hezekiah, the pretty, but somewhat weak, ‘Mother’s Picture’ of Cowper, and worse doggerel verses on the solar system.”
At the age of thirteen Dorothea was obliged to leave school on account of ill-health. She always considered this a fortunate circumstance as it enabled her to carry on her own education. No doubt a good deal of time was lost in following the circuitous routes of all self-educators, but the grit, determination, and power to overcome difficulties thereby developed, probably more than compensated for this. Libraries, notably those of the London Institute and Crosby Hall, at this time supplied her with many good books. The Medical Book Club circulated some books of general interest. She and her sisters were also able to attend excellent lectures given at the Literary Institution, Crosby Hall, and at the Gresham Institute.
“Miss Beale never learned to play,” said Mrs. Raikes in a speech on Foundress’ Day at the College after the beloved Principal had passed away. “During her girlhood there was no hockey, tennis, net-ball, swimming or other healthy exercise for girls; and Dorothea and her sisters were thrown back for their pleasure on the joys of the mind. Not only did Dorothea Beale never play herself, but she could never quite see the need for other people to play. The playgrounds, etc., which perforce grew up round Cheltenham Ladies’ College, were always rather a stumbling-block to her, though she was wise enough to be led by those who were more in touch in this respect with the spirit of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
“Her reading always inclined to the solid type, and in her girlhood she came across few novels.
“Her love of reading was never allowed to dissipate itself on trivialities, and here she had a great advantage over girls of to-day, for the ephemeral literature of this age—the endless magazines and short stories—did not exist to tempt and gradually to fritter away a good literary taste.”