Miss Beale obviously replied to this with some questions about the training of the choir, for Mr. Ruskin’s next and rapidly following letter closes thus:—
‘As for the choir, nothing is necessary but a due attention to girls’ singing, as well as their dancing. It ought to be as great a shame for a girl not to be able to sing, up to the faculty of her voice, might I say, as to speak bad grammar. You could never rival the Trinità di Monte, but could always command the chanting of the psalms with sweetness and clearness, and a graceful Te Deum and Magnificat.’
Besides the organ, Miss Beale’s wedding gifts included the first light of a stained-glass window above the new grand staircase. This was drawn by Miss Thompson, and executed by Clayton and Bell. Miss Beale herself chose the subject for the whole—a series of scenes from her beloved story of ‘Britomart.’
Over and above the opening of the new buildings, and the installation of the wedding gifts, there was in the early part of the summer term some excitement and much pleasant sense of preparation for the gathering of old pupils fixed for the 6th and 7th of July.
Then, into the midst of the glad anticipation, came as with transcendent suddenness Mrs. Owen’s death on June 19. Hers was indeed
‘a spirit that went forth
And left upon the mountain-tops of death
A light that made them lovely.’
But for many the happiness of the coming meeting was marred, most of all for her in whose honour it had been largely arranged. Miss Beale made no change, but went through all the proceedings as they had been planned, dwelling never for a moment on her sense of bereavement and loss, but speaking calmly even in public of the life that had passed out of sight.
The first meeting, on the evening of July 6, was a conversazione in the Upper or Second Division Hall. An unexpectedly large number of old pupils were present, and on the next day at the ordinary College prayers Miss Beale gave what was practically the first Guild address. Though made on an occasion of so much personal interest and gratification to herself, this address was remarkable not only for the piercing insight with which she ever penetrated below what was apparent or obvious, but also for what, for want of a better word, must be called its soberness. Touched, emotional as the speaker always was, keenly alive to the sense of union and communion with all lives that in the highest sense had come in contact with her own, happy in recognising the College to be a step by which souls might ascend out of mere material interests, marking with joy its noble work in the progress of the ‘higher education’ of women, she chastened all excess of feeling by the calm sincerity with which she could contemplate ‘Even in the green, the faded tree.’ ‘Schools too,’ she said, ‘like the members of which they are composed, have their period of growth, manhood, and decay. Some tell us the first is over for us, and that we, too, have settled down into vigorous manhood. I am not so sure that we have quite done with growth, even in the outside body; but however that may be, I trust there is that among us, which is not even like the most substantial building, not like the outward form, liable to decay and death.’