The incumbent of St. Philip’s, the Rev. A. E. Riddle, was a man of much learning. He had been Bampton Lecturer in 1832, and was the author of a well-known Latin Dictionary and other books. Miss Beale felt at home in his great library, and visits to Mrs. Riddle at Tudor Lodge were among the few recreations. Mr. Riddle died in 1859, and for the next few years she seems to have regularly attended St. Paul’s or Holy Trinity churches. She found real friends in the parsonage-house at St. Paul’s, but the immediate tie was soon broken, for in 1864 Mr. Bromby was made Bishop of Tasmania.
The claims of relationship and early friendship were not forgotten, but there was little time for letter-writing beyond the ever-growing correspondence connected with work. Mr. Beale wrote playfully of his daughter’s growing absorption:—
‘You always write as if you were at the top of your speed, and this is not good. I doubt not you have a great deal to occupy your time and your attention, but pray do not be always in a hurry, you will inevitably break down if you are so—you will lose in power what you gain in speed, as certainly as in mechanics; and with greater danger to the regularity of the machine.... I am really fearful to take up your time.... I daresay now you are scrambling through my note without that respect to which the writer and the subject are entitled. But pray remember that to neglect (the care of your health) is the worst economy in the world....
‘I will now release you, but I was unwilling quite to lose your correspondence, though do not write to me until you have a little patient leisure.’
Thus, in difficulty and obscurity, the life-work of Dorothea Beale was begun. But hers was a light which could not long be hid. Each year it burned more surely and shone further afield. By 1864, when the Endowed Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted, she was known as a successful head-mistress whose views and methods were worth hearing. With Miss Buss and others she was asked to give evidence.
CHAPTER VII
A ROYAL COMMISSION
‘I learnt the royal genealogies
Of Oviedo, the internal laws