Miss Cornwallis reflects the thought of her day with regard to women’s work. It was one of the tasks of her cousin, Dorothea Beale—whose ‘fagging’ in the next generation did so much for her own sex and the world—to show that the best work is done when the question of what will be said about it does not affect it one way or the other.[4]
The authorship of the Small Books was a well-kept secret.
‘We did not know who wrote the books till after her death, though my aunt, who gave them to us, often stayed with her as her amanuensis. Miss Cornwallis was a skilled handworker, too. Before the Society for Home Arts existed she learned to bind books for her library. She was no mean artist, and her portrait of herself in her library is considered very successful. I have heard how she fitted up a marionette theatre for the amusement of friends. I did not know her personally; she died when I was young; but the talk of her ability and knowledge, and the association with my aunt, Elizabeth Complin, who was her friend, had much to do with calling out my literary ambition.’[5]
The Beales were a very large family, with more than twenty years between the eldest and youngest children; and all those things which make home life at once precious in itself and valuable as a training for the world’s work were theirs to a full extent: mutual love and toil and suffering, the elder serving the younger, the little ones looking up to the wise elder sisters, the constant practice of all those qualities which are the law of a well-ordered religious home. Both parents from the midst of their own absorbing personal occupations found time to lead out the mental abilities of their children, by reading aloud to them, giving verses of Scripture and poetry to be learned by heart, and finding time to hear them repeated. The home atmosphere was serious and intellectual. Dorothea said she owed much to the literary tastes of her parents. ‘I shall never forget,’ she said, ‘how we learned to love Shakspere, through my father’s reading to us, when we were quite young, selected portions. I still remember the terror which, as a very small child, I felt as I heard Portia pronounce the verdict. I thought Shylock had really gained the day.[6]
‘History and general literature we would read with our mother, and listen with delight to her stories of the eventful era she had lived through.’
Miles Beale, like his wife, belonged to a family with cultivated tastes and interests. Among his relations he could reckon the eminent geologist and archæologist, William Symonds,[7] rector of Pendock, Gloucestershire, whose daughter married Sir Joseph Hooker. In connection with his friend the Rev. Charles Mackenzie, vicar of St. Helen’s, and others, Mr. Beale joined a committee known as the Literary Society, of which he became honorary secretary, for the institution of lectures in Crosby Hall. A library and evening classes were also formed, and these became in time the basis of the present City of London College for young men. He was much helped by Miss Maria Hackett, well known for her diligent efforts to rescue old endowments which, granted for girls’ education, had been alienated to boys. Mr. Beale, who was fond of music, was also a prime mover in getting up concerts of sacred music. ‘This made us acquainted with some musicians, and amongst others with Mrs. Bartholomew and her husband, the friend of Mendelssohn, who translated many of the German songs. He was a most interesting and cultivated man, an artist and dramatist.’[8]
The growing children were often allowed to be present when their father’s friends came, and thus silently heard much thoughtful and intellectual conversation. They looked up to him as to one who expected them to care for books and for matters of public moment, and he strove to interest them in his own pursuits and reading, and to give them a taste for what was really good. ‘“Blessed are the pure in heart”—poor Swift,’ he said one day as he handled a volume of the great satirist. ‘That,’ said Dorothea long after, ‘was the best literature lesson I ever received.’ The daughter must have resembled her father both in literary taste and zeal. This busy man, who found time to pursue so many interests, would accuse himself of being ‘naturally idle.’ It may come as a surprise to many who knew the strenuous life at Cheltenham to find this was a fault of which the Principal constantly accused herself.
One friend who was much with the Beales, often dining with them on Sundays, was Charles Mackenzie, then headmaster of St. Olave’s Grammar School, and successively vicar of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and St. Benet’s, Gracechurch Street, and prebendary of St. Paul’s. Dorothea felt she owed much to his teaching; he prepared her for confirmation in 1847. As children she and her brothers and sisters attended St. Helen’s. Again to quote her autobiography:
‘To come to the nearer influences of my childhood. There was the faith of my parents, the morning and evening prayer. There was the Bible picture-book and the Sunday lessons. The church we went to was an old one, St. Helen’s, and at the entrance were the words, “This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven.” There were high pews, and the service was almost a duet between clergyman and clerk, yet I realised, even more than I ever have in the most beautiful cathedral and perfect services, that the Lord was in that place, even as Jacob realised in the desert what he had failed to find at home. There was over the East window an oval coat of arms with strange scrolls which seemed to have eyes, and reclining on each side two life-sized golden angels. This thing seemed to speak strangely to my spiritual consciousness. Our clergyman must have read well. I remember how, as the story of the Crucifixion was read, the church would grow dark, as it seemed. There were no hymn-books, only a few hymns pasted on a card, and generally we sang from Tate and Brady. I know nothing of the substance of the sermons now, but I remember the emotion they often called forth, and how I with difficulty restrained my tears. There was a Tuesday evening service, at which I suppose there were never a dozen present, but I found there great help, and to be obliged to go elsewhere on that night was a great privation. The hymns were a great power in my life. I remember the joy with which I would sing, in my own room, Ken’s Evening Hymn, and the awful joy of the Trinity hymn, “Holy, holy, holy.”
‘The books that we read most on Sunday—for no secular book was allowed—were Mant’s Bible with pictures, which were explained by my mother, and a book of Martyrs with dreadful pictures; Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, with the outline drawings, and a number of tracts, such as Parley the Porter, and stories of good and bad children.