Miss Mary Margaretta Newman, member of a family which had shown itself sympathetic and interested in Miss Beale’s work from the first, offered to take a furnished house for a small number of students, to give her services, and contribute besides £75 a year towards expenses. Miss Newman had seen, whilst helping Miss Selwyn in her school at Sandwell, how much some such assistance was needed; how many girls of good social standing were struggling to obtain the training necessary to fit them to earn their living as teachers. She therefore provided a home for a few, and by her quiet, gentle influence supplemented the College work, and won the affections of her household. ‘What we felt most was the simplicity with which she gave so much. She seemed unconscious that she was doing anything remarkable in going to live in a small house, with one servant, and undertaking all the labour such an economy implied.’[47]
Miss Newman’s work went on for scarcely a year, for at the end of 1877, after a very short illness, aggravated by the burden she had willingly laid upon herself, she died, leaving the work but just begun indeed, yet full of promise, and rendered by her sacrifice and death a sacred charge to the College and the Lady Principal. So indeed Miss Beale felt it to be, and in after years she would remember the life given in the cause she herself had so much at heart, and would write in her diary on December 31: ‘I think of Miss Newman’s death. Shall I not follow her example?’ Then for the first time Miss Beale, who had always maintained and acted on the principle that the College should earn its own living, asked for money to buy and furnish a suitable house for girls who could not afford the terms of the boarding-houses. She could not bear to refuse the many applications she received from those who were too poor to help themselves. About £1200 was immediately collected, one half being contributed by the College staff.
The work thus begun extended so rapidly that in little more than five years it was seen to be necessary that it should have a building of its own, and the trustees who had the management of the funds decided to build a residential College. This was opened under the name of St. Hilda’s in 1885.
The first ten years in the new buildings were a time of larger development for the College than any other in its history. Miss Beale’s own active life was also more full, and not less anxious, than it had ever been. There was never again a time of depression such as the year 1871 had been, when the College seemed to be almost losing ground, when in the whole course of the year only three fresh pupils entered. But the rapid increase on every hand of new, good, cheap schools naturally fed her anxiety at a period when she had to justify to the Council her constant demand for more classrooms, music-rooms, halls, laboratories. She saw the immense importance of keeping ahead in these things. Other schools had endowments or guaranteed capital, the College could only increase and improve its plant out of the fees paid by the pupils. The Lady Principal did not wish it otherwise; but the constant remembrance of this made her very careful in expenditure, and ever desirous that all individual interest should be lost to sight in regard for the common welfare. There was something sharper than anxiety to bear over the boarding-house difficulties and the reconstitution of the Council. So much patience was needed, so much judgment in decisions, in avoiding mistakes, in retrieving them when made, that time and thought might well have been occupied with the care of actualities alone.
Yet it will not be surprising to some to know that it was just in these years that her inner life also became more full and more active, and that she was called upon to go through mental crises of great moment. The habit of prayer, difficult to maintain in a busy life, was strengthened by attendance at Retreats; a practice begun in 1877 to be continued yearly. Reading of every kind, with the exception of fiction, was diligently kept up, and thought was never more active.
The intellectual and spiritual struggles of this time permanently affected Miss Beale’s work and teaching. They cannot be passed over.
CHAPTER IX
DE PROFUNDIS
‘Es sind die, so viel erlitten