It was a great happiness to Miss Beale to see so much good work going on, and to meet so many who really cared for the cause for which she lived.
‘Many were the promises of visits; we left Paris with a higher idea of the great work that France is accomplishing, and grateful for the generous hospitality with which we were welcomed, and allowed to see all that is being done by those who are directing education in France.’
The immediate result to the College of this Congress of 1889 was an honour for its Principal when Miss Beale was made Officier d’Académie. In the following year a meeting of the ‘Société des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes’ met at Cheltenham. Miss Beale was elected a member of this Society, by means of which many French students came to Cheltenham. After her death a little article upon Miss Beale appeared in Les Langues Modernes, the monthly organ of this Society. It rightly acknowledged the welcome and the constant kindness that foreign students always received from her.
‘Il faudrait un volume pour analyser sa vie et son œuvre. Les Anglais l’avaient bien comprise, parce qu’elle résumait au plus haut point les qualités de leur race. Les étrangères ont pu admirer son esprit d’initiative, son énergie et son enthousiasme communicatif. Les jeunes filles françaises qui ont eu la bonne fortune d’étudier à Cheltenham, lui étaient particulièrement reconnaissantes de la sympathie large qu’elle leur témoignait. La vivacité et la spontanéité françaises, que les Anglais confondent volontiers avec la légèreté et l’insouciance, étaient des qualités qu’elle prisait beaucoup. La bienveillance pour nous se traduisait en actes. Dans ce collège aristocratique où les frais d’études étaient assez considérables, où l’on n’admettait que les jeunes filles appartenant à un milieu social élevé, Miss Beale réduisait volontiers les frais d’études des Françaises, et facilitait leurs relations avec des familles anglaises distinguées.
‘Elle eut pour plusieurs de mes compatriotes et moi des attentions qui nous allèrent au cœur. Quand nous la rencontrions dans les couloirs avec son petit bonnet blanc de douairière, ou quand elle nous invitait au thé dans son home, elles s’informait de nos études, corrigeant elle-même dans la conversation nos phrases défectueuses, nous parlant avec sympathie de notre pays, et nous rappelant le souvenir agréable qu’elle avait gardé de Paris, où elle était venue passer quelques mois dans sa jeunesse, en vue de compléter son instruction.’
A further result was the permission granted by the French Government for the admission of students from the College to Fontenay-aux-Roses. This permission was much prized by Miss Beale, who was comforted by it for delays which had occurred in the opening of St. Hilda’s, Oxford.
Another recognition of her work for education came to Miss Beale in 1896, when Durham University conferred upon her the distinction of Tutor in Letters. The widespread influence of that work was emphasised by her election in 1898 as a Corresponding Member of the National Education Association, U.S.A. In her letter acknowledging this honour Miss Beale said: ‘We receive much inspiration from the States, and possess in our Library a large number of valuable works from Americans on Philosophy and Education.’ She was specially attached to the writings of Dr. Harris.
The contrasts existing between girls’ education as it was in 1865 and thirty years later must have been brought very forcibly before Miss Beale when, in 1894, she was again asked to give evidence before a Royal Commission. The chairman of this was Mr. Bryce, who had himself inspected and reported for the Taunton Commission of 1864-7. The composition of this later body marked the advance that had been made. Of its seventeen members three were women. Well might Miss Beale say that the changes she had witnessed were ‘inconceivably great.’ Her own position was changed. On the first occasion she had merely been the able representative of a little known and rather despised class of workers. On the second she came as one of the recognised leaders of a band whose work was becoming yearly more valuable and more important.
Miss Beale was first questioned on the co-operation and co-relation of different schools in one neighbourhood. She expressed herself in favour of the co-operation of teachers, not of unity in governing bodies, ‘because one governing body is rather apt to generalise and say that everything that is suitable for boys should be done for girls.’ She was also careful to say that there must be a supreme authority in each school. One point of special interest to-day is the discussion which took place on the teaching of the classics to girls. Miss Beale, as has been shown, was never in favour of teaching either Latin or Greek to young girls, and she maintained her objections on this occasion. She thought it a mistake to begin Greek at the age of eleven or twelve, though she admitted that it was easier to learn than Latin. ‘But children,’ she said, ‘do not enter into the delicacies and refinements of the Greek language, ... and they get tired of it.... I do not think the most intelligent teacher could make a child like the intricacies of grammar early.’[85]
Miss Beale does not seem to have mentioned one reason why she would not teach Latin early until, in 1898, she wrote in Work and Play: ‘I feel strongly that Latin should, however, properly come after German, specially for girls. There is a pestilential atmosphere in the Campania, and one needs to have one’s moral fibre braced by the poetry of the Hebrews and of England and Germany, if one would remain unaffected by writings saturated with heathen thought.’