And again, in 1891, on the use of Scripture teaching:—
‘I think what we should do is to make it come home to the children in their daily life as a clergyman hardly can. We know their faults and temptations. I often take the baptismal vow. I really can’t find time to write much, and it is so impossible to suggest much. I am sure you will find things easier when you begin.’
The immense detail of the teaching, following as it did the innumerable suggestions that one text might give, was sometimes confusing to a new class. A term’s lessons might be occupied with a few verses only. Then there is no doubt that Miss Beale’s large way of thinking and comprehensive form of expression was difficult to follow. This did not lessen with age. New pupils, particularly of late years, were often filled with despair at the prospect of having to write out the lessons. Many felt the Sunday work it involved to be a strain. This was less the case at first, when perhaps intellectual interests had more undisputed sway. The life in College, as in other spheres, has become more full and offers fewer spaces for uninterrupted thought. Sometimes a whisper that her Scripture lessons were too difficult reached the Lady Principal. It grieved her, but she never quite believed it. She wrote of it to Miss Arnold:—
‘I like you to tell me what is said, but then I do not like to know more.... There are others much older to whom I address myself, and I see they do enter more and more as the year goes on, and I am teaching more now for the future. I do think I fortify some more for the trials of their future life than I did when you were here. Those who cannot follow, ought to be put into a class where the teaching is less difficult. They do not say this, I hope, about my Monday lessons, only the Saturday....’
The patient correction and explanation of the pupils’ essays on the lessons was not the least part of the Scripture work. How full, elaborate, and diligent this correction was will not readily be understood by any who do not know the Cheltenham system. But though Miss Beale wrote a great deal in the girls’ books, her corrections were often framed on the Socratic method so much prized by her. To take an example. A vague use of the word infinitely has written against it, ‘Do you mean from eternity?’ ‘The universe,’ writes one pupil lightly, to have the word underlined and with ‘Meaning’ written above it. And she had a wonderful eye for thought and effort. No writer, however poor, whose work showed signs of these was discouraged. One writes of this:—
‘I have one of my old Scripture books, and on looking it over, for the first time for many years, I am most struck by her power of seeing good in the very crude attempts of a girl of sixteen. It seems to me marvellous that she, with her great intellect, could have put herself on our level, so as to see when we had thought, and to encourage us with the “s” and “g” that we valued so highly. I am afraid I used to look out more for the “g’s” than for the comments and corrections that showed how much pains she took herself with each attempt of ours.’
A good deal of enthusiastic drudgery was needed for the corrector of twenty or thirty Scripture books every week. Even Miss Beale found it hard at times, and would write:—
‘Much idle time again. At 10 P.M. Thursday not touched a correction. Thus unfaithful while I am so much helped.’
And:—
‘Tired, but terribly negligent. Put off books in a really unpardonable way, and felt irritable at work.’