Dorothea Beale returned from a summer holiday abroad in 1856 to find these difficulties worse than ever. She and a friend thereupon sent in their resignations, hoping to be able to avoid giving any explanation. Dr. Plumptre, the Head, was, however, extremely anxious for her to reveal the reason for her withdrawal, which she did very reluctantly. After hearing her reasons for leaving, he acknowledged that she was acting in accordance with her conscience and was trying to do what she held to be her duty. Dorothea Beale throughout her life seems to have had to fight against an impetuosity of nature which was in curious opposition to that greatness of mind that enabled her to wait for the carrying out of any great project. Her action in this connection was characteristically impetuous, for before the correspondence was concluded, she had accepted the post of Head Teacher at Casterton School.
Already we find that she had formulated some of the educational theories she held through life. One of these, which she mentioned in her letter to Dr. Plumptre, was that girls can be thoroughly educated only by women: that though some classes may be taken profitably by men, the education of girls as a whole must be in the hands of their own sex. She showed also her appreciation of the need for thorough groundwork, without which no advanced work can be well done.
Though her action in this matter was characteristically impetuous, and that of a young idealist, it revealed that strong sense of duty which would not allow her to shrink from any painful experience, if the doing of right was involved.
Dorothea Beale, probably because she was one of a big family of girls, was apparently spared one of the most perplexing problems of modern girls and women. From the moment when she felt herself called to the work of teaching she seems to have had no doubt that she was right to obey the call, and was thus saved the torment of the woman worker who is haunted by the thought of home needs unfulfilled. The only daughter in a home, who feels herself called to work outside it, has one of the most difficult of life’s problems to face. She has the knowledge that an ageing father and mother need her, that, perhaps, she will have by and by to earn her own living, and has in her heart the incessant call of the work that claims her. There is no one solution to a case of this kind: every case must be judged independently. It is a difficulty as inherent as sex or any other vital part of life, and needs to be honestly and frankly faced. To most girls in this position, I should say: Get your training early, whilst your parents are still strong and well, so that if the opportunity of doing work comes you may be ready. Some girls who live in big towns are able to combine home duties with outside work: though on those who are not strong this life of twofold duty is often a great strain. Others, less fortunately placed, realise that the two are alternatives, the choice must be made, and the more imperative duty accepted. In this connection it is well to realise, I think, that the harder duty is not of necessity the right one. The work one dislikes is not necessarily the work one ought to undertake, though it may be. The attitude of many religious people in the past has, I think, been quite wrong in this respect. God has given to all of us special talents and aptitudes, in the exercise of which we find our greatest happiness and do our best work. To believe that the Creator always calls us to do the uncongenial task is, to my mind, to mock His plans. If, however, the beloved task has to be deferred, and the need of our loved ones claims us, there comes with the accepted duty peace and rest of mind, and the waiting time may be used for preparation of mind, heart, and character. To many men and more women, who have kept before them the vision of the work they would do, has often come in a quite unforeseen way an opportunity of doing it: and they have realised how much richer and better their life is for their wider experience during the time of waiting.
CHAPTER IV.
A DIFFICULT YEAR AND A TIME OF WAITING.
“Difficulties are the stones out of which all God’s houses are built.”—Archbishop Leighton.
All readers of “Jane Eyre” will remember the school, Lowood, to which Jane was sent, and her terrible experiences, especially at the beginning of her time there. The foundation in actual life of this school of fiction, coloured by the Brontë temperament, with its evils exaggerated for the purposes of art, is known by all to be the Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton. As we have seen in the last chapter, it was to this school that Dorothea Beale had somewhat hastily resolved to go after sending in her resignation to the Head of Queen’s College. Probably she looked upon the offer of this post as an indication that she was to sever her connection with the college in London. If in her decision she was to blame, she certainly paid the price of her mistake.
Casterton is near Kirkby Lonsdale, in a somewhat lonely district, within sight of the rounded height of Ingleborough. Dear to the heart of north-country people is this glorious wild country, but it must have seemed terribly out of the world to a girl accustomed to the life of London, to its libraries and lectures, and the many interests of the metropolis.
From the first Dorothea Beale felt herself oppressed and hindered by numbers of things which she did not approve, and could not alter. The girls wore a uniform which she found terribly depressing: the rules of the school were extremely rigid, and the restrictions so many that she felt the girls had no room for growth. To her, the whole organisation of the place seemed wrong in principle, and the effect on the character of the girls of a too rigid discipline appears to have been pernicious. To one whose views on education were already clearly defined, the having to “carry on” without any power to change what was wrong, must have been an extremely trying experience.
Nor was there much compensation in her own work of teaching: rather the opposite. She found herself compelled to teach many subjects, far more than she could do justice to: Scripture, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Ancient and Modern Church History, Physical and Political Geography, English Literature, Grammar and Composition, French, German, Italian, and Latin. Holding such strong views as she did about the preparation of lessons and the careful correction of children’s work, she must have found this undue multiplication of subjects very unsatisfactory. There can be, I suppose, for natures like Dorothea Beale’s, few things so trying as circumstances which make a high standard of work impossible. Her father’s letters to her at this time reveal the strong friendship that existed between the two. She wrote home that she found the work hard and her father replied, evidently with the idea of cheering her:—