‘I think, having a Boarding House as well as a School was a mistake, and she felt it so at last. It was impossible for her to attend to it much herself; and I think she should not have rushed off on foreign tours at Christmas.
‘Finally, perhaps, I may say that she was, it seemed to me, always pained and surprised at wrong in others, and expectant of good, and able to see the latent good underlying the apparent evil. She had the charity that hopeth all things.
‘Her generosity in money matters was very great, especially to her family. She used to speak with such joy and pride of the battles her brother fought in Shoreditch, and her brave sister-in-law, and great was her affection for her nephew.
‘Forgive my incoherence please, and take the will for the deed.’
Miss Beale wrote but little about herself, but in her correspondence with an intimate friend, she would give glimpses of her own personal life, even of her doings, as well as of her thought and reading. Her letters to Miss Amy Giles are the most interesting from this point of view, covering as they do the last period of her life. Some extracts from these are given:—
‘July 6, 1897.
‘Dear Amy,—I wonder what you will do now that you have quite lost your beloved mother. I was talking with Miss Sewell about you, and said I wished you could come and spend a week here.... If you came the week after next, perhaps you would like to stay for our Quiet Days at the end.’
To the same:—
‘August 15, 1897.
‘I have kept your letter so long, hoping I might see my way to pay you a visit, which I should so very much like to do, but I am afraid the prospect is a diminishing one. It was a great pleasure to renew my acquaintance with one whom I had loved as a pupil, and to find we had grown even nearer during the intervening years. It would, too, be a pleasure to see Miss Sewell, for whom I have so great an admiration. I will not altogether give up hopes, but I am much afraid it will be impossible. The work for Longmans is to fill two hundred pages. I get ordinarily a hundred and fifty letters a week on College business, and now that we are beginning this Elementary work, there is a Head to be found, prospectuses to be drawn up, the Education Office to be consulted, etc., and also the Magazine to be edited, and some few people I must see....