The name of the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice will always be associated with the founding of Queen’s College. Perhaps the name means little to men and women of our generation, though he was not only a great thinker but one of the pioneers of those who apply Christian standards to social life. He founded a Working Men’s College, which is still in existence, and took a great part in the work of Queen’s College. He was compelled to resign his chair of theology at King’s College, on account of his unorthodox beliefs, especially on the question of eternal punishment. Throughout his life he suffered much from charges of heresy, but he exercised a great influence on the religious life of his day, and on that of subsequent generations. He denounced any political economy based on selfishness, declaring it to be false: the Cross, not self-interest, must be the ruling power of the Universe. His lecture at the opening of Queen’s College was a most inspiring one, and his words must have fallen on the ears of some of the girls who listened to him like a call to high and noble service.
“The vocation of a teacher,” said he, “is an awful one: you cannot do her real good, she will do others unspeakable harm, if she is not aware of its usefulness.” He spoke against the harm done by simply providing her with necessaries. “You may but confirm her in the notion that the training of an immortal spirit may be just as lawfully undertaken in a case of emergency as that of selling ribands.” He went on to speak with great decision about the need of a thorough education for those whose special work was “to watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the first dawnings of intelligence: how thoughts spring into acts, how acts pass into habits”.
It was probably about this time that Dorothea began to see what her life-work was to be, and the noble inspiring words of this great servant of God doubtless did much to strengthen in her mind the sense of being called to high service. All through her career there is no thought more marked than that of the loftiness of a teacher’s work. From herself as well as from others of her calling she demanded that consecration of body, mind and spirit without which there can be no good work done. All who have read her “Addresses to Teachers,” and other works on teaching, realise the high level on which she placed the teacher’s calling, and the stress she laid on the need to pursue continuously impossible ideals of goodness and efficiency.
“All of us have to begin and we live in the intimate consciousness of this thought: Here is a child of God committed to my care, I am to help in so developing him in time that he may be a dweller in the eternal world here and hereafter. I, too, must live an eternal life, in order that I may draw forth that consciousness in him. I must behold the Face of the Father, and so become a light to my children that, seeing the light shine in me, they may glorify that Father.”[1]
[1] “Addresses to Teachers,” I, by Dorothea Beale.
Queen’s College was the greatest boon to Dorothea Beale. It gave her the chance of getting first-rate teaching in Mathematics and Greek. With Mr. Astley Cook she read, privately, Trigonometry, Conic Sections, and Differential Calculus. Soon after she was asked to teach Mathematics and became the first lady Mathematical tutor. As a teacher she could, ex officio, go to any class she liked, and attended at different times lectures on Latin, Greek, Mental Science, and German.
One of her chief friends at this time was a girl of her own age, Elizabeth Alston. The two used to study together, Elizabeth teaching Dorothea singing, whilst her friend taught her to read the New Testament in Greek. In later life she realised how much these singing lessons had done for her, enabling her to use her voice without fatigue for hours together.
Training colleges for elementary school teachers were established before there was anything of the kind for the teachers of better class children, and it was the head of the Battersea Training College who examined the candidates and awarded the diplomas for knowledge of methods of teaching.
At Queen’s College Dorothea Beale began to show signs of where her power as a teacher would lie. Throughout life it was one of her leading ideas that a teacher should be primarily an inspirer of her pupils: that though she should never cease to prepare her work with the greatest care, her aim should be chiefly to kindle the enthusiasm that would make her pupils eager to learn for themselves. Even at this early age she seems to have possessed this faculty, and long after she left Queen’s College, she occasionally received letters from her former pupils, saying how much her teaching had meant to them.
Her time there, however, was not to be long. There arose difficulties which she felt could not be tolerated. These were, briefly, that one particular person had too much authority, while the women visitors had too little, and what they had was gradually diminishing. This led to many evils, notably the promotion of children into the upper section, or college, from the lower section, or school, long before they were able to derive any benefit from advanced tuition.