In dealing with individual character, faults, and weakness Miss Beale showed no common tact, and often surpassing astuteness. To begin with, she was herself so well disciplined, so well attuned to the highest thought of work for others, that probably she did not even feel irritated by the errors and mistakes of her children. Certainly she never showed annoyance. It is impossible even to think of her being satirical or sarcastic either in teaching or in dealing with faults of manner or character. She would have considered it unpardonable in an under-teacher to be so, almost as reprehensible as to treat or speak of a child as stupid. She had indeed a special love for ‘ugly ducklings,’ in whom she would frequently perceive and draw out a latent swanhood.
Some things—such as what she termed the ‘petty larceny of her time’ by those who prolonged an interview by aimless small talk—did irritate her; but she would no more have been annoyed by the shortcomings of a child than a doctor would be at the illness of a patient. Though able to adapt herself spontaneously to individual characteristics, she had certain distinct lines along which she worked. Dealing with ordinary childish faults she would make no appeal on high religious grounds, used no set or stock phrases. Always, in big and little things, she would show the child some ground for expecting right action from her, pointing out something probably connected with her home which, a legitimate source of satisfaction, should be also a spur to do well. Or she would treat a rebellious act in such a way as to rob it of all its delight. An amusing instance of this was told by a writer in the Guardian of November 21, 1906: ‘On one occasion a very clever student, with an unruly temper, refused, because some one had annoyed her, to eat her breakfast on the day of an important examination. Her form mistress begged Miss Beale to persuade the girl to have at least some milk. She was sent to Miss Beale, and was greatly startled by—“I hear you are fasting to-day; for a temper like yours it is probably a wise discipline.” Nothing more was said, but the girl did not refuse her luncheon.’ Such homœopathic treatment was sometimes also applied to idleness, a rare fault in a schoolgirl. It was, in ancient days, occasionally known in the Third Division at Cheltenham. Quite rarely, in consequence, a little girl would be allowed to do nothing but sit still all the morning. No one had a chance of showing obstinacy. It was a relief to more than one young teacher to be told that ‘You must never let a child have the satisfaction of holding out against you.’ If such a thing did occur, there was no contest, no opposition of superior power on the part of a teacher; a few, very few words from the Lady Principal would make the child see the futility and silliness of her attitude.
A moral delinquency was, however, met with the very greatest seriousness. Parents were sometimes surprised at the extraordinary pains Miss Beale would take to obtain the confession of such a fault as copying a lesson. The slightest suspicion of dishonesty was always followed up at once, but the act was never brought home to the offender until there was positive proof. Then the way would be made easy for her, the lie prevented by something like this: ‘My child, I am sure you have too good a conscience to rest with such a thing as this upon it.’ Conviction and confession of a fault made it immediately possible to show how it came about, how it might be prevented in the future. Especially in the matter of untruthfulness Miss Beale would trace the outside fault to its source, showing it to be a symptom of some corrupting force within, cowardice, vanity, or idleness. In this connection it is well worth while to read her remarkable little paper on Truth.[72]
One tale of her discrimination may well be told. A class-teacher received some anonymous letters which she took to Miss Beale, naming the girl she took to be the writer. Some days passed. The teacher thought the matter forgotten, when one morning Miss Beale said to her, ‘Send —— to me. I can see by her face this morning that she will tell me all.’ Miss Beale was not disappointed either in the confession or its effects.
No one could reprove like Miss Beale. Her grief, her admonition were expressed not only with so much sympathy, but with such an absolute impersonal sense of rightness and justice, that it was impossible to resent them. ‘Nothing is more touching,’ she wrote in 1898, ‘than the penitence of children, when they find that we have seen the good which is hidden, and not only the evil that comes forth; that we know, not only what is done, but what is resisted.’[73] Any who had so failed became a special care. ‘We try,’ she wrote once, ‘to make her feel there is no anger at all, but sympathy and an anxious watchfulness which will, we hope, make her more watchful over herself.’
To break the rule of silence was always regarded as a great fault. A careless pupil, conscious of breaking it only once or twice, would be surprised to find in her term’s report, ‘Disobedient to rule.’
A girl whose influence was seen to be a source of evil—a single act or conversation might be enough to prove it—was instantly removed. Careful as Miss Beale was to let no pupil go who might by any possibility be induced to stay, she never hesitated a moment in a case of this kind. The extreme seriousness with which she regarded this may be gathered from the following letter to a head-mistress:—
‘This is grievous. How is it that girls were allowed to go out by themselves? I wonder, too, that Miss —— did not see there was something wrong. No girls can act thus without some unnatural excitement. Then are there no prefects in the house? no elder girls to be relied on?—no confidential servant? I don’t see how you can keep any one of the three, but perhaps there are degrees of guilt. It was so different at ——. A girl began to talk as she ought not—the younger girls told the seniors, the seniors came to ——; she told me, and within two hours the girl had left the house. There ought to be such confidence between the seniors and the head of the house, and constant vigilance over the girls’ characters and insight. I always feel that a school is at the mercy of one naughty girl, and we must never relax our vigilance. It is sad to think that they have degraded women in the eyes of all that know it.’
Such instances are stated, not because it was continually the part of the Principal and her staff to deal with iniquity. On the contrary, the order and conduct of the school were singularly good,—the sense of duty, fostered by a call to exercise it rather than by precept, was unusually high. One means by which this was maintained was the constant collaboration of the parents. In all matters Miss Beale tried to take them with her, encouraged them to come to her, to talk over the children, spoke to the children about them, wrote to them on special matters, tried to get them to understand her aims. Her letters, too, show what pains she took to bring about a real co-operation. On one occasion no less than ten letters passed between Principal, parent, and class-teacher on so simple a matter as a child returning in the afternoon, according to a school rule, to do a lesson over again. Miss Beale won the child to see and do what was right, but she also wrote to the mother:—