It was soon found to be a real difficulty to know the efficient teacher from the mere pretender. For the lack of education is frequently seen in an assumption of knowledge. In the days when women were required to teach everything, a confession of ignorance on almost any subject was regarded as a disgrace. The advance of true education is marked by the fact that it is no longer necessary for a governess to pretend to knowledge she does not possess.
It was soon seen that if the registry for teachers was to be of any value, some test must be established for the women it undertook to recommend. The first efforts at examination revealed such depths of ignorance, that the further necessity of instructing those who wished to avail themselves of the society’s diplomas was perceived. This need happily coalesced with the generous plan of Miss Murray, Maid of Honour to the Queen. She seems first to have thought of a college for women, and had already received donations of money towards such an object. These she transferred to Mr. Laing, when in 1844 he entered into communication with the Government respecting the establishment of a college. In 1847 Queen Victoria graciously gave her permission for the adoption of the title ‘Queen’s College,’ and a house in Harley Street, adjacent to that occupied by the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution was taken. Mr. Laing then called upon some of the Professors of King’s College to help him in the work by giving lectures to governesses and others, and it was largely owing to their talent and unwearied kindness that the College became rapidly so successful.
It should not, however, be thought that Queen’s College was destined by its founders solely to help governesses, though in this direction its usefulness was immediately seen. Miss Murray and Mr. Laing, like Alfred Tennyson and others less immediately interested in the scheme, looked beyond such direct results to the larger needs of women. The time had come when it was recognised that marriage could not be the lot of all,—that there might be purpose and interest in a woman’s life even when she could not be married, and that to use marriage merely as an escape from an empty impoverished existence was an act unworthy of a good woman. Women were now willing to fit themselves for life independently of marriage, and for this end were seeking intellectual development. Therefore the founders of Queen’s College planned that the education should be general, and not merely an initiation into a craft which a governess might learn as if she were a member of a certain guild. For the governess herself, it was surely best that she should be educated as if she had interests in common with the rest of her sex, and for all women it was needful that they should seek means to inform, occupy, and control their own active minds and ‘wandering affections.’ Mr. Laing thought with compassionate horror of the wasted lives of many women, of their capabilities and sympathies which were meant to enrich the lives of others, degraded by misuse or disuse into positively harmful activities. After Queen’s College had been opened for some months he wrote, in words which some will recognise as a favourite quotation of Miss Beale’s, ‘the fate of some victim of a conventional marriage, or of a life of celibacy ending in deranged health, is particularly sad and pitiful. Like the daughters of Pandarus who, after being nurtured by the goddesses and fed on honey and incense by the Graces, are snatched away by the Harpies, “And doomed for all their loving eyes, To serve the Furies who hate constantly.”’
Miles Beale was among those who shared such thoughts for women. It was his aim to give his daughters every opportunity to cultivate their minds and pursue any path of knowledge they should desire. Above all, he wished that they should not regard marriage as a necessity.
The inaugural lecture on the opening of Queen’s College was delivered by the Rev. F. D. Maurice, the first Head of the College, on Wednesday, March 29, 1848. As his inspiring but stern words fell upon the ears of Dorothea Beale, we may well believe that the sense of vocation which must early have grown for her out of her natural dutifulness, became to her more clearly shaped. Certainly, in reading them now, we feel we are tracing back to its source a stream of that thought with which she herself in due time awed and inspired many a young teacher. ‘The vocation of a teacher is an awful one; you cannot do her real good, she will do others unspeakable harm if she is not aware of its usefulness. Merely to supply her with necessaries, merely to assist her in procuring them for herself ... is not fitting her for her work. 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 ribbands. How can you give a woman self-respect, how can you win for her the respect of others, in whom such a notion or any modification of it dwells? Your business is by all means to dispossess her of it; to make her feel the greatness of her work, and yet to show her that it can be honestly performed.’
The speaker went on to deal with the word ‘Accomplishments,’ a word which at that time was supposed to cover the whole of a woman’s education; and he pleaded that something more than finish, something substantial and elementary was needed for those whose duty was ‘to watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the first dawnings of intelligence;—how thoughts spring into acts, how acts pass into habits. Surely they ought, above all others, to feel that the truths which lie nearest to us are the most wonderful ... that study is not worth much if it is not busy about the roots of things.’
Again, with what responsive if silent joy must the girl who had toiled alone at Euclid and Algebra have heard his encouraging words on Mathematics, then held to be an unfeminine pursuit. ‘To regard numbers with the kind of wonder with which a child regards them, to feel that when we are learning the laws of number we are looking into the very laws of the universe,—this makes the study of exceeding worth to the mind and character; yet it does not create the least impatience of ordinary occupations; ... on the contrary ... it helps us to know that nothing is mean but what is false.’
The concluding thoughts of Mr. Maurice’s address must be familiar to Cheltenham pupils: ‘The teacher in every department, if he does his duty, will admonish his pupils that they are not to make fashion, or public opinion, their rule ... that if these are their ends, they will not be sincere in their work or do it well.... Colleges for men and women ... exist to testify that opinion is not the God they ought to worship.’ We can hardly realise, after nearly sixty years of the liberal education won for us largely through this first concerted effort of earnest men and women, the trembling joy and diffidence of those pupils,—some of them mere girls, some already themselves engaged in the work of teaching,—who formed the first classes in Harley Street. We have become so accustomed to the new order of things then inaugurated, that their allusions to Tennyson’s Princess, their fear of being regarded as outré seem to us almost self-conscious and unnecessary. Professor Maurice opened his address with an apology for the word ‘College’; on another occasion he spoke of the project as ‘equally extravagant if not equally imaginative with that lately set forth by our great poet.’ Miss Wedgwood recalls dismay under the ‘witless laughter roused by the mention of the College after I had been its pupil for more than a year.’
Nor was this all. A more annoying opposition took shape in articles in the Quarterly in which the theological opinions of the lecturers were attacked. The writer found fault in the first place on such points as these: the early age of admission was likely to lead to desultory education; the absence of proper framework and machinery, and the want of proper authority were to be deplored; the low rate of payment might lead governesses availing themselves of the classes to get by their means a smattering of knowledge. He then proceeded to attack the professors for a ‘sort of modified Pantheism and Latitudinarianism prevailing in their so-called theology,’ adding that the lecturer on English Composition distinguished himself above the rest of his company by the ‘Germanisms embroidered on his prose.’ Mr. Laing took up a vigorous pen to answer the Quarterly, and in defence of Maurice, Kingsley, and the rest, exclaimed: ‘These men are doing a righteous and godly work in the face of heaven and earth.’
It is a wonderful history. Remarkable, too, were the women and girls who seized the advantages offered them, who were waiting almost literally for the College doors to be opened. Mrs. Davenport, then Miss Sarah Woodman, records with natural pride the fact that she was the first pupil. She was quickly followed by Miss King, and we may be sure that the three Miss Beales were not far behind them.