CHAPTER XIV
HONOURS
‘He deserved well of his country.’
‘Shall we try to deserve more rather than to win more?’ said Miss Beale when she quoted the phrase of the Roman senate, which heads this chapter, to some children—not of Cheltenham—who were to receive prizes. It well expresses her feeling about rewards. They should grow out of the work; should be some fresh privilege of service. Hence her indifference to prizes in the College. They were given on a percentage of marks obtained in the midsummer examinations. They were announced when the marks of the classes were read to them on the first morning of the next term, but they were never presented: they had to be fetched by the individuals who earned them from the secretary’s room.
‘I was opposed,’ she wrote on one occasion, ‘to this custom. I did not think it necessary to make pupils work, they seemed as earnest and painstaking before prizes were given as since. I felt it was better they should work from a love of knowledge or a simple sense of duty, but the Council took another view, and as there is much to be said on their side of the question, I yielded.
‘In life, prizes must be to a great extent the reward of thoughtful industry, and it seems to me that on the one hand we may thereby teach the children to put success at its true value, and point out to them that it is at the bar of our own conscience alone that we must stand approved or condemned; that on the other hand they may learn to bear disappointment patiently. I do not find that prizes create any feelings of jealousy or ill-will, nor can I blame a child who looks forward with pleasure to carrying home to her parents this proof that she has tried to do as they would have her. It appears to me a matter of less importance than is usually supposed, and in any case can affect only a few pupils at the head of a class. Stimulants to exertion, however, are rarely needed. There are very few who are not interested and earnest in their work, and our difficulty is more frequently to check too great zeal, and to insist on the observation of those limits we place to the time devoted to study than to demand more.’
The high ideal of deserving rather than gaining was what Miss Beale set before herself as true wealth to be desired. So she was careful, when the management of large public funds and a much increased personal income came to her, to remain as frugal, as poor as ever. It was not merely that she liked simplicity. Her simplicity of life was a deliberate intention. There was a personal note in the fervour with which she would read the words of Abraham to the king of Sodom: ‘I will not take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet, ... lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich.’ No monk was ever more faithful to his chosen bride of Poverty than Miss Beale remained with her large income and successful investments. She was consistent also in preferring for those she loved a simple personal life, which would leave mind and time free for thought and the needs of others.
When first Miss Beale went to Cheltenham she adopted a very simple mode of living, such as she thought would sufficiently meet her needs, and she never changed it. At the age of seventy she would even help to lay her own table for the frugal midday meal, if the general servant had been delayed by household work in the morning. She would walk to the station to save a cab fare, and invariably chose the simplest means of conveyance unless on a matter of urgency. It is true she became rather grander in dress as years went on. ‘What did I wear,’ she wrote to Miss Brown about 1876, after some function she had attended, ‘“velvet and ostrich feathers?” Well, what could I wear but my felt bonnet and old velvet cloak and old black serge? I looked quite smart enough.’ Kind friends there were who liked to see the Lady Principal beautifully dressed, and who were allowed in later life to guide her into velvet and ostrich feathers. She submitted for the sake of the College, for whose good she would cheerfully have worn either sackcloth or cloth of gold!
For the sake of the College, still more for the sake of that work for women and the race which the College represented, Miss Beale gladly greeted honours. That they had anything to do with herself personally, she was not even aware. Her work did indeed receive recognition far and wide from those who prized education, and who regarded it from various points of view.
Among the first to honour it with special notice and a substantial, even magnificent gift, was John Ruskin, when in 1885 he presented to the College two beautiful and valuable manuscripts—one, of the four Gospels, in Greek, written in the eleventh century; another (Antiphonarium Romanum) of the thirteenth century. He gave also a collection of printed books. These were the occasion of an interesting series of letters from Mr. Ruskin to Miss Beale. Some of them are printed here.
‘Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, February 10, 1882.