The Project Gutenberg eBook, Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham, by Elizabeth Raikes

DOROTHEA BEALE
OF CHELTENHAM

Photo. J. C. Hughes

Dorothea Beale
from the portrait by J. J. Shannon.

DOROTHEA BEALE
OF CHELTENHAM

BY
ELIZABETH RAIKES

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
AND COMPANY LTD.
1908

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

TO
‘HER CHILDREN’

PREFACE

Miss Beale left ample materials for the history of her work. Not only were all business documents, such as minutes of council meetings, nomination papers, examination questions carefully preserved, she kept also all letters which could be of any interest. She went further than merely arranging materials for a future book. In 1900 she compiled a very complete History of the Ladies’ College. Here she traced its origin, growth, and expansion; here, too, she named most carefully all who by earnest work and self-denial, by industry, talent, or generous gift, had in any way contributed to its wellbeing and influence. She was anxious that all faithful work should be known.

But Miss Beale recognised that after her death there would be a demand for something more. She was earnestly desirous that in any account which might appear of herself, the work for which she lived should have the first place. With her innate sensitiveness, she shrank from the thought of a Life. It would not indeed be possible to write a life of Dorothea Beale which was not also, fully and intimately, a Life of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. Yet Miss Beale left some materials for the more personal side of the book—many letters, diaries, and autobiographical fragments. One paper opens thus:

‘In these days we all live in glass houses, and it seems useless to say, Let nothing appear in print. The life of the College, for which I have lived forty years, some reminiscences of the state of things as regards education, and some traces of the way in which the Potter has formed the vessel for the service of the household, may perhaps be allowed. It seems to me that the story of the inward life may be helpful. I should relate only those things which, on looking back over my long life, seem to have exercised a formative influence upon my own character, and tended under God’s Providence to fit me for the work which was given me to do. The circumstances and ideals of my childhood, the family influences, sometimes what seems a chance acquaintance, or even a passing remark; these viewed from within might have had an influence little dreamed of at the time.’

I have endeavoured in this book to follow Miss Beale’s own suggestions, but also to give some faint idea of what she was to the many she inspired and taught. In her History of the Ladies’ College she left little historical fact unmentioned: it is possible for another to show that she was the real founder, the main builder.

Many thanks are owing to those who kindly furnished me with letters from Miss Beale. It was difficult to select from the very large number received, and it was with much regret that many had to be excluded, lest the book should become unwieldy.

It remains but to add one word on my gratitude for the unfailing kindness and generous help of those who have read this book in manuscript and proof; to Mrs. Reynolds and Miss Bertha Synge; to Miss Helen Cunliffe who undertook the somewhat wearisome task of deciphering the diaries, and, lastly, to Miss Alice Andrews, whose name Miss Beale associated with mine when she asked me to write a History of the College.

ELIZABETH RAIKES.

June 2, 1908.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD

‘Wisdom goeth about seeking them that are worthy of her, and in their paths she appeareth graciously, and in every purpose she meeteth them.

‘For her true beginning is desire of discipline; and the care for discipline is love of her; and love of her is observance of laws.’

Wisdom of Solomon, vi. 16, 17, 18.

Dorothea Beale was born on March 21, 1831. The story of her childhood and youth forms a good illustration of the best education that girls of the early Victorian time could obtain. It gives also a glimpse of the fears and hopes, the silent struggles, the disappointments of many a girl who strove to wrest, as from a grudging Fate, the opportunity to inform and use her mind. As far as possible this story is told autobiographically.

Miss Beale belonged to a Gloucestershire family. One ancestor, in the early days of the manufacturing settlement in the Stroud Valley, married a Miss Hyde, a relation of the Chancellor. She brought to her husband Hyde Court, Chalford, where Miss Beale’s brother, Mr. Henry Beale, now resides. Miss Beale’s own father, however, never lived there. His parents, who married young, settled at Brownshill in Gloucestershire, and here his father (Dorothea’s grandfather) died, leaving a widow aged only twenty-four with three children, John, Miles, and Mary, to be brought up on very slender means. Mrs. John Beale removed to Bath, where she remained till the boys left school for Guy’s Hospital. Then she came to live with them in Essex, where for a time they practised in partnership. In 1824 Miles married Dorothea Margaret Complin, a lady of Huguenot extraction; her grandfather had practised as a physician in Spital Square, one of the original settlements of the French immigrants.

In 1830 the young couple with three children came to live in St. Helen’s parish, Bishopsgate, where a year later Dorothea, their fourth child and third daughter, was born. She was baptized in the ancient church of St. Helen’s on June 10, 1831. ‘Awoke early. Baptism Day. Read the service,’ she wrote in her diary in 1891.

The Complins were a family of wide connections. Mrs. Beale’s aunt, Mrs. Cornwallis, wife of the Rev. William Cornwallis, rector of Wittersham, Kent, was an active, benevolent woman with literary tastes and occupations. She took a great interest in her two young nieces, Elizabeth and Dorothea Margaret Complin, who at an early age lost their own mother, her sister. The two little girls were sent to school at Ealing, where the elder, Elizabeth, gained many prizes or ‘Rewards of Merit,’ as school prizes were then called. After her sister’s marriage to Mr. Miles Beale, Elizabeth Complin lived for some time with her clever aunt and cousin, Mrs. Cornwallis and her daughter Caroline, sharing their interests and studies. On the death of her brother’s wife she came to live in London. There she was brought into immediate touch with her nieces, Dorothea Beale and her sisters, whom she delighted to help and advise in their reading, and who by her means became familiar with the aims and ideals of the Cornwallises. These more distant relations, whose intellectual aims and work Miss Beale always reckoned among the influences of her early life, were themselves authors of no mean merit. ‘Mrs. Cornwallis wrote several devotional books, and is said to have learned Hebrew in the first instance to teach her grandson, James Trimmer. She wrote also for him a series of papers on the canonical Scriptures, in four volumes. This was published by subscription, as was the custom with expensive works in those days. The Queen and a number of great people entered their names, and with the profits Mrs. Cornwallis was able to build schools in her husband’s parish.’[1]

James Trimmer died when only twelve. His other grandmother was also literary—Mrs. Sarah Trimmer, famous in her own day as the author of nearly thirty volumes for the young. Her Sacred History was the most important of these, but perhaps the best known now is The History of the Robins.

‘One story of his childhood,’ runs the autobiography, ‘was a great favourite with us as children. His uncle had settled to sell a pony of which James was very fond, and many were the tears he shed. His grandmother (Mrs. Cornwallis) said, “I think, James, that this life is a journey upwards; each time we do right, or bear a sorrow patiently, we get up one step of the ladder to Heaven.” So he dried his eyes and was quite cheerful once more. Meanwhile, his uncle, seeing the boy’s sorrow, cancelled the sale, and brought news to James that the pony was his once more. Again to his surprise, James burst into tears, and at length it was drawn from him that he feared now he would have to come down from that step of the ladder. He was finally consoled by some such doctrine as Browning has commended in the words, “’Tis not what man does that exalts him, but what man would do.” All her pupils were not as responsive as James. Once, after expending her eloquence on a plough-boy whom she was preparing for confirmation, she said: “Now, are you not glad that you have a soul?” to which she could only get the reply, “I don’t care very little about it....”

‘Mr. Cornwallis was a scholar; he was a descendant of Archbishop Cornwallis. I do not know any details of his College career; but he taught his only unmarried daughter Latin and Greek classics, and she gained such a rare facility in understanding that he used to read the classics aloud to her, and expect her to follow. He was a friend of Sismondi, from whom Miss Cornwallis received an offer of marriage, which she declined on the ground of great disparity of age. Sismondi lent her afterwards his villa at Pisa, and my aunt, her great friend, accompanied her there. A journey to Italy for two ladies was a great undertaking, and many interesting reminiscences used we to hear from my aunt. She there acquired a good knowledge of Italian, by which we benefited later.’[2]

In after years Miss Caroline Cornwallis moved to Maidstone, where she exercised her many talents and versatile mind in varied occupations. Miss Cornwallis not only studied Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but such questions of the day as criminal procedure; she also read philosophy. She wrote besides articles for the Westminster Review and Fraser’s Magazine, several books in a series entitled ‘Small Books on Great Subjects—edited by a few well-wishers to knowledge.’ The first was Philosophical Theories and Experience of a Pariah. She said women were regarded as pariahs, and were it known that the book was written by a woman it would not be read.[3] Others of the series which she wrote were some volumes entitled A Brief View of Greek Philosophy, and some historical works, The State of the World before the Introduction of Christianity. She also wrote a classical novel called Pericles and Aspasia. Miss Cornwallis rejoiced in the fact that as a woman, though unknown, she obtained for her writings the praise of ‘big-wigs.’

‘“I long,” she wrote to a friend after one of her works had received flattering notices in the British Medical Journal, “to knock all the big-wigs together and say it was a woman that did all this—a woman that laughed at you all and despised your praise. And if, like Caligula’s wish, I could put all mankind into one and leave you to say that in its ears when I am gone quietly to my grave, I think it would be glorious. It is as a woman, and not as the individual C.F.C., that I enjoy my triumph; for, as regards my own proper self, I like to creep in a corner and be quiet; but to raise my whole sex and with it the world is an object worth fagging for. Heart and hand to the work.”’

Caroline Frances Cornwallis
From a painting by herself

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.

‘An aunt, my godmother, lived with us, and was often my friend in my childish troubles. I shall not speak much of the governesses we had in succession, because they left but little impression on my inner life, nor need I speak of all my brothers and sisters, except so far as they come into my inner life. The strongest influence was that of my sister Eliza. We were constantly together. She had a very lively imagination, and on most nights would tell me stories that she had invented. Early in the mornings she would transform our bedroom into some wild magic scene, and we would play at Alexander the Great, and ride Pegasus on the foot of our four-post bedstead. I remember now how Mangnall furnished her with mental pictures of heathen gods, which were cut out in paper and painted. London children had no outdoor games.’[9]

The elder daughters were at first educated by daily governesses. Dorothea said that among her earliest reminiscences about 1840 were those relating to the choice of a governess.

‘My mother advertised and hundreds of answers were sent. She began by eliminating all those in which bad spelling occurred (a proceeding which as a spelling reformer I must now condemn), next the wording and composition were criticised, and lastly a few of the writers were interviewed and a selection was made. But alas! an inspection of our exercise-books revealed so many uncorrected faults, that a dismissal followed, and another search resulted in the same way. I can remember only one really clever and competent teacher; she had been educated in a good French school and grounded us well in the language.’[10]

Memory preserves the name—Miss Wright—of the lady who earned this word of praise. When she left, the girls were sent to school.

‘It was a school,’ again to quote Miss Beale’s own account of her education, ‘considered much above the average for sound instruction; our mistresses were women who had read and thought; they had taken pains to arrange various schemes of knowledge; yet what miserable teaching we had in many subjects; history was learned by committing to memory little manuals; rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the Lamentations of King Hezekiah, the pretty but somewhat weak “Mother’s Picture” of Cowper, and worse doggrel verses on the solar system.’[11]

The arrangements were doubtless similar to those of the period in all schools of the same kind, such as were described by Miss Beale in one of her early articles on the Education of Girls.

‘I know one school,’ she wrote, ‘existing to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, in which the terms were not less than £100 a year. The following was the arrangement of hours: Rise at seven o’clock ... Lessons till eight; breakfast, consisting of bread and butter, with extremely weak coffee; lessons till twelve, luncheon, consisting of bread and butter, or bread and jam, and “turns” till one o’clock. These “turns” consisted in going thirty times post haste round and round the garden; they could scarcely be accomplished unless the luncheon were carried round in the hand and eaten en route. Lessons from one o’clock until three forty-five. Dinner four o’clock, and “turns” in fine weather immediately following, as after luncheon. Lessons until eight, then tea, and bed at nine.’[12]

The school was at Stratford, and it lent perhaps a personal reminiscence to a favourite line of Chaucer’s Prologue, on which, in the literature lessons at Cheltenham, Miss Beale never failed to dwell.

‘After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.’

She always had a horror of schoolgirl French, and the practice at one time so common of permitting no talk except in French.

‘Our thinking power was hindered from developing by intercourse with one another, because we were required to speak in a tongue in which we could indeed talk, but in which conversation was impossible; and the language we spoke was one peculiar to English boarding schools.’[13]

Young as Dorothea was when she went to school, she was no doubt distinguished there for her industry and ability, and certainly for her conscientiousness. A little story of this remains. On one occasion she fainted in church, and when some kindly hand removed her bonnet, she revived, and clung to it desperately, because she would not have her head uncovered in church. The weary rounds in the garden lingered in the memory of those who performed them, and there were those who would tell in after years how faithfully the little Dorothea would perform her ‘turns,’ while some girls were not above cheating a little.

The school-days were not prolonged, for ‘fortunately,’ she says,—

‘Ill-health compelled me to leave at thirteen, and then began a valuable time of education under the direction of myself, during which I expended a great deal of energy in useless directions, but gained more than I should have probably done at any existing school; dreaming much, and seeking for a fuller realisation of the great spiritual realities, which make one feel that all knowledge is sacred. We had access to two large libraries; one that of the London Institution, the other that of Crosby Hall; besides which the Medical Book Club circulated many books of general interest, which were read by all and talked over at meal-times and in the evening, when my father used often to read aloud to us. Novels rarely came our way, but we found pasturage enough. We read a great deal of history: the works of Froissart, Thierry, Thiers, Alison, Miller’s Philosophy of History, Sir James Stephen’s books, Prescott’s, Creasy’s stand out very distinctly to memory.’[14]

The reading of a book named Scientific Dialogues she counted also as an era in her mental history. All the good reviews of the time, the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and Blackwood’s Magazine, came in her way, with books of travel and biographies. She made elaborate tables on all sorts of subjects, some of which in neat handwriting may still be seen. She had access to all Whately’s works, and worked up alone his Logic and Rhetoric.

This unwearied study was no accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, it was the outcome of a true if youthful admiration for what was noble and good. ‘I worshipped for years Isabella of Castile. Sir James Stephen’s essay on George the Third filled my imagination with magnificent visions; his Port Royalists were my ideal characters; especially was Pascal a hero, I read and re-read his Life and Provincial Letters.’[15]

Pascal’s life perhaps breathed for her a spirit of emulation. ‘I borrowed a Euclid, and without any help read the first six books, carefully working through the whole of the fifth, as I did not know what was usually done. It did not occur to me to ask my father for lessons in such subjects.’[16] She also made some way with algebra, and calculated for herself the distance to the moon. Much time, she owned, was wasted by working alone. But the very difficulties proved a source of help, showing her the value of knowledge acquired by effort and search, as opposed to mere information received from another. In all her reading she received both help and sympathy from her aunt, Elizabeth Complin, who herself understood Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, had considerable taste for mathematics, and was fond of philosophy. She was one of the first subscribers to Mudie’s. The London Library was also a mine of wealth to the young readers.

Outside her home, the chief educational influence for Dorothea at this period must have been the lectures of the Literary Institution at Crosby Hall, and more especially the Gresham Lectures. She attended some of these in company with a younger sister, who often grew weary and hungry when Dorothea, after a long morning’s work, would stay to talk abstrusely with a professor, or linger over a bookstall on the way home to dinner. The professor was probably Mr. Pullen, of whose lectures on astronomy she wrote that they ‘inspired a passionate desire to know more of mathematics, and to understand all the processes described. I obtained books on mechanics and spelt them out as well as I was able, but was often baffled. The mysteries of the Calculus I pored over in vain ... not knowing that I lacked the knowledge which alone could make it intelligible.’[17]

Dorothea’s educational fortune proved itself to be better than that of the Prioress, for in 1847 she was sent with two elder sisters, their characters ‘ripe for observation,’ to Mrs. Bray’s fashionable school for English girls in the Champs Elysées. This school, kept by English ladies, was supposed to offer a good English education, as well as French.

‘Imagine our disgust,’ writes Miss Beale, ‘at being required to read English history in Mrs. Trimmer, to learn by heart all Murray’s grammar, to learn even lists of prepositions by heart, in order that we might parse without the trouble of thinking. I learned them with such anger that the list was burnt into my brain, and I can say it now. The “Use of the Globes,” too, we were taught, and very impertinent was I thought for asking a reason for some of the tricks we were made to play with a globe under the direction of Keith. We used indeed to read collectively Robertson’s Charles the Fifth, i.e. it was read aloud on dancing evenings. Each class went out in succession for the dancing lesson; thus no one read the whole book, though the school in its corporate capacity did. I felt oppressed with the routine life; I, who had been able to moon, grub, alone for hours, to live in a world of dreams and thoughts of my own, was now put into a cage and had to walk round and round like a squirrel. I felt thought was killed. Still, I know now that the time was well spent. The mechanical order, the system of the French school was worth seeing, worth living in, only not for long.’[18]

One personal glimpse we have of the sisters at school in a letter of Mr. Beale’s to Dorothea: ‘I thought your last letter very nicely written; tell Eliza so, though it did not apply to hers. She does not write much, though in the right spirit too: but a genteel hand is of great importance. I am aware it requires much practice.’

The old-fashioned word exactly describes the neat, fine, pointed handwriting, which is preserved for us in two or three French exercise-books of the time. This writing soon after began to suffer from too much of the German character, and later still more from unduly ambitious haste. There is also in existence a thin book of dictées signed Dorothée, belonging to this period. The teacher has written at the foot of one or two of these, after the enumeration of a few omitted commas and accents, a word surely inapt as bestowed on this pupil, ‘Etourdie.’

The school was brought to an untimely end by the Revolution of 1848, when a mob surrounded the house demanding garden-tools as firearms. These were not available, but Miss Bray faced the men and persuaded them to leave quietly. Before this incident occurred Dorothea Beale and her sisters had been fetched home by a brother, who did not, however, leave Paris without taking them round the city to see as much as they could of the movements of the Revolution.

This return from school may be considered the close of childhood; for Dorothea was now seventeen. A grave and quiet girl, so we learn from one or two friends of her youth, with a sweet, earnest expression, and deliberate speech; also with a sunshiny smile and a merry laugh on occasion. She was remarkable even in a studious, sedentary family for her love of reading and study. For her the fields of literature had taken the place of those other fields and gardens now held to be a necessity for the best development of children’s bodies and minds. But her life in the less favourable surroundings of a great city was made bright by ‘the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet’s dream.’ The joys of imagination and fancy, the delight of entering into the thoughts of the great, were hers, and lifted her above what was small and trivial. She knew also, and from babyhood seems to have known, a stern side of life. An innate sense of duty, that guide she never failed to observe, already hedged her steps, protecting her strong, eager spirit from flights of ‘unchartered freedom,’ leading it through restraint and self-denial towards a glorious liberty.

There was plenty to do at home; younger sisters to be taught and schoolboys’ lessons to be superintended. The boys were at Merchant Taylors’ School, where the education was neither better nor worse than in other public schools of the day. Such as it was, it gave Dorothea a horror of the old-fashioned methods by which boys were taught Latin and Euclid, without intelligence and without sympathy. It was one of her tasks at this time to aid in the daily grind of this uninteresting work. Mrs. Frederick Sewell, an old friend of the family, remembers the boys going off to their lessons under the supervision of the clever elder sister. Uncongenial as must have been to her the work of directing boys already wearied with a long day at school, it was evidently done in a spirit of dutifulness and high endeavour. In 1876, a brother, the Reverend Edward Beale of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, wrote to her after what proved to be a final parting: ‘Our lives seem wonderfully linked together, and I am more conscious every year how much my life has been influenced by your early teaching. If I had followed that way of Duty I should have found the entrance less rugged to the more excellent way.’ Nor was the task a wasted one for Dorothea herself. She determined, she tells us, to follow her brothers’ lessons on her own account as well as theirs, and thus was enabled to gain a thorough knowledge of Latin grammar.

The younger sisters remember the careful and regular teaching given them by the elder ones, the quiet instructive games they were encouraged to play with little pictures from Greek mythology, and the rewards bestowed on industrious pupils. It is on record that Dorothea herself dressed a doll for a little sister’s birthday.

For she was by no means unequal to feminine pursuits. She could be what is called useful at home; the inevitable sock-darning which falls to a girl’s portion in a family of many boys was not neglected; though carried on simultaneously with the mental exercise of learning German verbs. An exquisitely fine piece of tatting remains to testify to skilfulness of fingers, as well as to the perseverance she more gladly devoted to intellectual efforts. Such was the interleaved New Testament, a monument of patient toil, into which she copied in very small writing whole passages of comment from the Fathers and other writers. So full of work was the home life that there can have been scarcely any leisure; but a few so-called holidays were spent in rubbing brasses in the ancient city churches. There was full occupation even for the strenuous spirit of Dorothea Beale, in the interests and affairs of home, but a wider field for her energies was to open with the gates of Queen’s College in 1848.

CHAPTER II
QUEEN’S COLLEGE

‘Long shall the College live and grow,

When we three sleep in peace,

And scholars better far than we

Its glory shall increase.’

Eliza Beale on the Jubilee of Queen’s College.

Mr. Llewelyn Davis rightly said that the establishment of Queen’s College was an epoch in women’s education. Like that of all really great institutions, its development and growth were an outcome of the needs of the time. But the movement which led up to it was ‘not from beneath but from above. It was compassion in the hearts of a few good men which moved them to help a forlorn class of solitary and ill-paid workers, that seemed the immediate cause. A little band of men full of faith and good works came to the help of a man whose influence was quiet but strong.’ The good man of whom Miss Beale thus spoke was David Laing, who was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Kentish Town, from 1847 to 1858. Good he was, in many senses of the word: a man of education, wide culture, and personal force. He showed both large-hearted charity and wisdom in dealing with the needs of those for whom it was his duty to care, and he was ready to make any self-sacrifice required in carrying out his schemes for them.

In 1843 he became Honorary Secretary of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, a position he occupied till his death in 1860, and the lamentable state of women’s education, particularly that of professing teachers, was brought forcibly before him. The society, which had had a kind of passive existence only for two or three years, began at once under Mr. Laing to develop manifold activities. Within a year the work of help for which it was primarily intended was in full swing, and its scope of usefulness was enlarged by the establishment of a registry and a scheme for granting diplomas to governesses.

It was soon found to be a real difficulty to know the efficient teacher from the mere pretender. For the lack of education is frequently seen in an assumption of knowledge. In the days when women were required to teach everything, a confession of ignorance on almost any subject was regarded as a disgrace. The advance of true education is marked by the fact that it is no longer necessary for a governess to pretend to knowledge she does not possess.

It was soon seen that if the registry for teachers was to be of any value, some test must be established for the women it undertook to recommend. The first efforts at examination revealed such depths of ignorance, that the further necessity of instructing those who wished to avail themselves of the society’s diplomas was perceived. This need happily coalesced with the generous plan of Miss Murray, Maid of Honour to the Queen. She seems first to have thought of a college for women, and had already received donations of money towards such an object. These she transferred to Mr. Laing, when in 1844 he entered into communication with the Government respecting the establishment of a college. In 1847 Queen Victoria graciously gave her permission for the adoption of the title ‘Queen’s College,’ and a house in Harley Street, adjacent to that occupied by the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution was taken. Mr. Laing then called upon some of the Professors of King’s College to help him in the work by giving lectures to governesses and others, and it was largely owing to their talent and unwearied kindness that the College became rapidly so successful.

It should not, however, be thought that Queen’s College was destined by its founders solely to help governesses, though in this direction its usefulness was immediately seen. Miss Murray and Mr. Laing, like Alfred Tennyson and others less immediately interested in the scheme, looked beyond such direct results to the larger needs of women. The time had come when it was recognised that marriage could not be the lot of all,—that there might be purpose and interest in a woman’s life even when she could not be married, and that to use marriage merely as an escape from an empty impoverished existence was an act unworthy of a good woman. Women were now willing to fit themselves for life independently of marriage, and for this end were seeking intellectual development. Therefore the founders of Queen’s College planned that the education should be general, and not merely an initiation into a craft which a governess might learn as if she were a member of a certain guild. For the governess herself, it was surely best that she should be educated as if she had interests in common with the rest of her sex, and for all women it was needful that they should seek means to inform, occupy, and control their own active minds and ‘wandering affections.’ Mr. Laing thought with compassionate horror of the wasted lives of many women, of their capabilities and sympathies which were meant to enrich the lives of others, degraded by misuse or disuse into positively harmful activities. After Queen’s College had been opened for some months he wrote, in words which some will recognise as a favourite quotation of Miss Beale’s, ‘the fate of some victim of a conventional marriage, or of a life of celibacy ending in deranged health, is particularly sad and pitiful. Like the daughters of Pandarus who, after being nurtured by the goddesses and fed on honey and incense by the Graces, are snatched away by the Harpies, “And doomed for all their loving eyes, To serve the Furies who hate constantly.”’

Miles Beale was among those who shared such thoughts for women. It was his aim to give his daughters every opportunity to cultivate their minds and pursue any path of knowledge they should desire. Above all, he wished that they should not regard marriage as a necessity.

The inaugural lecture on the opening of Queen’s College was delivered by the Rev. F. D. Maurice, the first Head of the College, on Wednesday, March 29, 1848. As his inspiring but stern words fell upon the ears of Dorothea Beale, we may well believe that the sense of vocation which must early have grown for her out of her natural dutifulness, became to her more clearly shaped. Certainly, in reading them now, we feel we are tracing back to its source a stream of that thought with which she herself in due time awed and inspired many a young teacher. ‘The vocation of a teacher is an awful one; you cannot do her real good, she will do others unspeakable harm if she is not aware of its usefulness. Merely to supply her with necessaries, merely to assist her in procuring them for herself ... is not fitting her for her work. You may but confirm her in the notion that the training of an immortal spirit may be just as lawfully undertaken in a case of emergency as that of selling ribbands. How can you give a woman self-respect, how can you win for her the respect of others, in whom such a notion or any modification of it dwells? Your business is by all means to dispossess her of it; to make her feel the greatness of her work, and yet to show her that it can be honestly performed.’

The speaker went on to deal with the word ‘Accomplishments,’ a word which at that time was supposed to cover the whole of a woman’s education; and he pleaded that something more than finish, something substantial and elementary was needed for those whose duty was ‘to watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the first dawnings of intelligence;—how thoughts spring into acts, how acts pass into habits. Surely they ought, above all others, to feel that the truths which lie nearest to us are the most wonderful ... that study is not worth much if it is not busy about the roots of things.’

Again, with what responsive if silent joy must the girl who had toiled alone at Euclid and Algebra have heard his encouraging words on Mathematics, then held to be an unfeminine pursuit. ‘To regard numbers with the kind of wonder with which a child regards them, to feel that when we are learning the laws of number we are looking into the very laws of the universe,—this makes the study of exceeding worth to the mind and character; yet it does not create the least impatience of ordinary occupations; ... on the contrary ... it helps us to know that nothing is mean but what is false.’

The concluding thoughts of Mr. Maurice’s address must be familiar to Cheltenham pupils: ‘The teacher in every department, if he does his duty, will admonish his pupils that they are not to make fashion, or public opinion, their rule ... that if these are their ends, they will not be sincere in their work or do it well.... Colleges for men and women ... exist to testify that opinion is not the God they ought to worship.’ We can hardly realise, after nearly sixty years of the liberal education won for us largely through this first concerted effort of earnest men and women, the trembling joy and diffidence of those pupils,—some of them mere girls, some already themselves engaged in the work of teaching,—who formed the first classes in Harley Street. We have become so accustomed to the new order of things then inaugurated, that their allusions to Tennyson’s Princess, their fear of being regarded as outré seem to us almost self-conscious and unnecessary. Professor Maurice opened his address with an apology for the word ‘College’; on another occasion he spoke of the project as ‘equally extravagant if not equally imaginative with that lately set forth by our great poet.’ Miss Wedgwood recalls dismay under the ‘witless laughter roused by the mention of the College after I had been its pupil for more than a year.’

Nor was this all. A more annoying opposition took shape in articles in the Quarterly in which the theological opinions of the lecturers were attacked. The writer found fault in the first place on such points as these: the early age of admission was likely to lead to desultory education; the absence of proper framework and machinery, and the want of proper authority were to be deplored; the low rate of payment might lead governesses availing themselves of the classes to get by their means a smattering of knowledge. He then proceeded to attack the professors for a ‘sort of modified Pantheism and Latitudinarianism prevailing in their so-called theology,’ adding that the lecturer on English Composition distinguished himself above the rest of his company by the ‘Germanisms embroidered on his prose.’ Mr. Laing took up a vigorous pen to answer the Quarterly, and in defence of Maurice, Kingsley, and the rest, exclaimed: ‘These men are doing a righteous and godly work in the face of heaven and earth.’

It is a wonderful history. Remarkable, too, were the women and girls who seized the advantages offered them, who were waiting almost literally for the College doors to be opened. Mrs. Davenport, then Miss Sarah Woodman, records with natural pride the fact that she was the first pupil. She was quickly followed by Miss King, and we may be sure that the three Miss Beales were not far behind them.

Among the earliest pupils beside those already named, were Miss Buss, Miss Frances Martin, Miss Jex-Blake, Miss Elizabeth Gilbert, and Miss Adelaide Anne Procter, whose simple holland dress without ornament, bands of dark hair, pale complexion, and regular features are noted for us by a young fellow-student, Miss Wardell. And the teachers were worthy of the pupils. Among the lecturers and examiners were the Rev. F. D. Maurice, the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, afterwards Dean of Wells, the translator of Dante, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, the Rev. R. C. Trench, then Dean of Westminster, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, John Hullah, W. Sterndale Bennett, Dr. Brewer the historian, Professors Bernays and Brasseur. These are well-known names, but there were many others almost forgotten to-day, who were interesting and inspiring teachers. There were no lady-teachers at first, but Miss Beale enumerates with grateful words a staff of lady-visitors, ‘who undertook, of course gratuitously, the often burdensome duty of chaperoning. Lady Stanley of Alderley, stately and beautiful all her life, but especially then; Mrs. Wedgwood, the daughter of Sir James Mackintosh, so clever and kind, whom everybody liked; Miss Elizabeth Twining, Lady Monteagle, and Lady Page Wood were often present; and a Mrs. Hayes, of whom I have lost sight, was one of the most diligent. I never happened to meet Lady Canning, she went to India almost immediately.’

Before tracing Miss Beale’s own connection with Queen’s, it is worth while to read the following letters written to her by Miss Buss in 1889, in which the working of the College, especially with regard to the evening classes, is shown in a detailed and personal way:

January 13, 1889.

‘Queen’s College was distinctly an outcome of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution. It was found that governesses living in the Home in Harley Street were often very ignorant, and Mr. Laing, a University man himself, asked some of the King’s College professors to give some lectures to the ladies living in the Home, so that they might be better informed when leaving to take a situation. The professors responded, some lectures were given, but it soon became evident that outsiders must be admitted to help to pay expenses—so the College was opened in 1848....

‘Mr. Laing kept his original idea before him, and soon induced some of the professors to give, free of charge, courses of evening lectures to women actually engaged in teaching. I was a member at the very outset, being the youngest woman then attending the evening lectures. A very able man, Mr. Clark, Principal of Battersea, gave a splendid course of Geography lectures (of England, I think), Mr. Cock took Arithmetic, Mr. Brewer, Latin translation—he was a first-rate teacher. Some one else took Latin Grammar, Mr. Laing gave Scripture. The first term I attended six nights a week, the second, four. F. D. Maurice took Elizabethan Literature somewhat later; Trench gave his lectures on English from his manuscript notes, and how delightful they were! English Past and Present, etc. I do not remember Kingsley, I was not introduced to him until many years after. Nicolay gave Ancient History, and was not popular....

‘Queen’s College began the Women’s Education Movement undoubtedly, but it became conservative, and did not grow.... There was a Rev. A. B. Strettel, who taught grammar well, but only to the day-students, I think. Recalling the old days in this way takes one back to one’s youth. Queen’s College opened a new life to me, I mean intellectually. To come in contact with the minds of such men was indeed delightful, and it was a new experience to me and to most of the women who were fortunate enough to become students.... Believe me, as always, yours affectionately and admiringly,

Frances M. Buss.’

In reply to some questions from Miss Beale in answer to the above, Miss Buss wrote again on January 17, 1889:—

‘The day classes were of course attended by girls and women from outside. I attended the evening classes in 1849. Our school was opened in 1850, and then as we began with sixty girls, and ended the first quarter with eighty, I had not time to attend and work as I had done before. Mr. Laing always wanted to help women teachers, and he was strong enough to get the King’s College men to teach governesses gratuitously in the evening, each professor only attending one night in the week. The men had plenty of work and pay for their day lectures. The evening classes went on for some time, and were very well attended by women, all of whom were teaching. Some of these women (I among them) presented themselves for the irregularly conducted examinations, for which certificates were offered. Each professor did as he liked, he saw the candidate alone—at any rate in my case it was so—told her to write answers to questions set by him, asked a few vivâ voce questions, and then gave a certificate. No papers were printed, therefore no one could know what line the examiner would take. I have three of these certificates. Later, the examination became more formal and more valuable; a sort of standard was created.’

Dorothea Beale was, as a matter of fact, strictly a pupil of Queen’s College for an even shorter time than her great contemporary. But there for the first time she obtained the object of her ambition—mathematical training, given by Mr. Astley Cock. Of this she characteristically remarked, ‘as the class was small I could go at my own pace. The work was however elementary, and as I had read a good deal alone, I found private lessons necessary.... I read with him privately Trigonometry, Conics, and the Differential Calculus.’ After a time Miss Beale was asked to help in teaching mathematics, and in 1849 was appointed the first lady mathematical tutor. ‘I had the entrée of any class I liked, being tutor, and attended at various times—Latin, Greek, German, and Mental Science.’ She speaks also of the delight she had ‘at the opening of a Greek class by Professor Plumptre. The class, it is true, languished and died in less than two years. For nearly a year it consisted of myself and a friend, and most thoroughly did we enjoy reading Plato and Sophocles under such a teacher.’ Miss Beale also much enjoyed an interesting German literature class held by Dr. Bernays.[19] The formal reports of progress made, of attendance, and even of good conduct at the classes may still be seen. The attendance, it goes without saying, was always regular, the conduct very good, and the progress most satisfactory.

In 1854 Mr. Plumptre required help with the Latin tuition, and asked Miss Beale to take a junior class. In the same year she was offered the post of head teacher in the school under Miss Parry, from whom she says she received ‘much kindness, and learned from her many valuable lessons; we travelled abroad together during one long vacation.’

Queen’s College, both by the tuition it afforded, and the experience it gave in teaching and managing classes, was an important factor in Dorothea Beale’s training for her life’s work. There was a yet further advantage in its certificates. Miss Beale and her sisters, like Miss Buss and others engaged in the work of education, desired and obtained from the College diplomas certifying their ability to teach. These were obtained by examinations, which in the earliest days were conducted in the manner described in Miss Buss’s letter already quoted. Miss Dorothea Beale herself spoke with unmitigated pleasure of her first examination conducted by Professor Maurice. ‘The vivâ voce was a delightful conversation; he led us on by his sympathetic manner and kindly appreciation, so that we hardly remembered he was an examiner’; and she says later, ‘I remember to this day what a pleasant hour we had of vivâ voce; his wonderful power of intellectual sympathy came out, and made us forget that we were being examined; he seemed to take pleasure in following up our thoughts on the bearings of the history we had read, so that it appeared we were holding a delightful conversation on the subject. Again, in speaking of language, he wanted not merely formal and conventional grammar, and showed such pleasure when a grammatical definition was enlarged beyond the scope of ordinary school-books.’

It should be remembered that the examination which proved to be so ‘delightful’ was on the result of her own private reading encouraged by home sympathy, and a few public lectures. The questions asked were of wide scope; some were quite simple, almost superficial; others were framed so as to draw upon intelligence or a reserve of knowledge.

The educational certificates of sixty years ago, the first ever given, have a great and touching interest for those who love to follow the development of intellectual advance. The simple way in which the advantages offered by the examinations held by the Committee of Queen’s College are set forth speaks of effort and hope, unconnected with the school routine and studied preparation made necessary by the large and complicated system of the present day. Below the lists of Patrons, Committee, and Lady Visitors, it is stated that the Committee is prepared to give certificates in any of the following subjects: The knowledge of Scripture; English Grammar and Literature; History, Ancient or Modern; French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc.; Music, Vocal or Instrumental; Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry; Geography, Geology, Natural Philosophy, Botany, etc.; Drawing, Painting in any style; Principles and Methods of Teaching. To this truly magnificent offer,—infinite indeed if any value is to be attributed to ‘etc.’—is attached the note: ‘As it would be absurd to suppose that any governess could combine all these varied subjects, the List is offered, that Parents may select those to which they attach most importance; and may observe how the certificates meet their wishes.’

Miss Dorothea Beale obtained six of these certificates, and four of the later ones, granted under slightly different conditions. The first, dated June 12, 1848, for English Literature and English Grammar, states that the examiner, Professor Maurice, is of opinion that Miss Dorothea Beale ‘has shown much intelligence, and a very satisfactory acquaintance with these subjects.’ The diploma bears also, as do the other certificates, the signature of Mr. Laing, the Honorary Secretary, and of the Rev. C. F. Nicolay, Deputy Chairman, and afterwards called Dean of Queen’s College. Mr. Nicolay was also Librarian of King’s College. The next certificate, for French, is only three days later in date, June 15, 1848. On this, Professor Isidore Brasseur states that he considers Miss Dorothea Beale ‘well qualified to teach that language (which she speaks fluently, having acquired it in France) theoretically and by practice.’ The two diplomas gained in December of the same year are of even greater interest for her pupils at Cheltenham. The first of these, dated December 11, 1848, and signed by the Rev. Thomas Jackson, Principal of the Battersea Training College, who had examined her in the Principles and Method of Teaching, states that ‘she has paid praiseworthy attention to the subject, and is likely to become an accomplished teacher.’ We note the office of the examiner. Already then, in 1848, itself a mere infant, elementary education was giving the lead in this important subject; for when at last, after a long day of desultory and often unfruitful toil, those who were the professed teachers of the rich sought to learn the meaning and methods of their work, they found that they could only do so in England from the teachers of the poor.

The date of the next certificate, December 26, shows how much these diplomas were dependent on voluntary and individual attention, and opportunity on the part of the examiners. This, signed by Professor Plumptre, states that in her knowledge of Holy Scripture, Miss Dorothea Beale exhibits ‘a very intimate knowledge of its history and Scripture.’ On January 16, of the following year, a certificate for Geography was signed by Mr. Nicolay, who is of opinion that ‘she has studied the subject carefully in its details, and that her knowledge in its various branches is satisfactory.’

In November 1850 Miss Beale received from her mathematical tutor, the Rev. T. Cock, a certificate of efficiency in Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, and Trigonometry. He is of opinion that ‘she has acquired a sound knowledge of the first principles of these four subjects, showing considerable ingenuity in the application of them to examples and problems; that she possesses the power of defining and distinguishing with clearness and brevity, and that appreciation of mathematical reasoning which, if further cultivated, will enable her to study with success those treatises on Natural Philosophy which require a knowledge of the exact sciences.’

In 1855, after the certificates had become classified, this diploma was exchanged for a first-class certificate. And in the course of these later years she received two other first-class certificates, one for Latin, and one for German; and, for pianoforte playing, a second-class certificate, signed by W. Sterndale Bennett. For this was required the performance of the more important sonatas of Mozart (without accompaniments), the early sonatas of Beethoven, the ‘Lieder ohne Worte’ of Mendelssohn, and Cramer’s Studies. This must have been for Dorothea Beale a period of happy and fruitful life and work, during which her interests enlarged in many directions. The connection with Queen’s College brought much congenial acquaintance, while at home she was working vigorously at German and still following the classical work of her brothers.

In 1851 Miss Beale’s family removed to 31 Finsbury Square, then a great medical centre; thirty-one houses were occupied by medical men. There were friends to share her aims and interests. Among these we specially note Mrs. Blenkarne and Miss Elizabeth Alston. To the first of these Dorothea confided her hopes and aims, and gained from her sympathy and help, a boon she never forgot. The links of the friendship so begun ran on throughout her life. Mrs. Blenkarne’s daughters and great nieces were educated at Cheltenham.

In Elizabeth Alston Dorothea had a friend of her own age—a friend who survives to tell of the many happy hours the young girls spent together, of the books they read and discussed, their philanthropic works, and dreams of good. Dorothea, always fond of teaching, gladly instructed her friends. Miss Alston learned from her to read St. Mark in Greek, and in return taught her to sing. ‘We would linger long at the piano, as I sought to make her convey by her singing the depth of meaning in the words, “But the Lord is mindful of his own.” She told me it was a revelation to her.’

As late as 1902 Miss Beale wrote to that friend of her youth: ‘I think with gratitude of those lessons you gave me in singing; this, I believe, has helped much to make me able to teach without fatigue. “In questa tomba oscura” was fine for a chest voice. I suppose you are as much interested in music as ever.’ And in 1903, with an allusion to those designs on all knowledge which the friends had shared, she wrote: ‘Sanscrit is very fascinating; my Sanscrit studies were cut short by my coming here.’

The vacations of this period were spent sometimes at watering-places like Brighton, or Blackheath, where she would be in charge of the younger members of the family. To this day is remembered her conscientious way of taking them for a walk with her watch in her hand. Sometimes she went to Germany or Switzerland, where she took every opportunity of studying schools and methods of education. She was most happy in her work. The actual teaching, apart from the subject, was in itself a delight. That power of inspiration which she held should be one of the gifts a teacher should earnestly covet, was already hers. This was felt not only by the elder pupils, whose minds under her guidance opened to the interests of Latin and mathematics. The children in the school knew it also. An unexpected tribute from one of these once reached Miss Beale, when the parent of a pupil wrote: ‘I have just learned from my little girl that the Lady Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was my dear and valued teacher of olden days, at Queen’s College.... I assure you I have never ceased to cherish a warm affection for you, and I have never forgotten your great kindness to me in Harley Street.’ In 1905, at the time of the College jubilee, one who had been a child pupil of Miss Beale’s wrote to her: ‘The few months during which I was under your tuition more than fifty years ago were an epoch to me. Young as I was, I ever afterwards judged teaching by the standard set by yours, and very seldom indeed, I may truly say, has it been subsequently reached. The fifty years that have since passed, full as they have been, have never effaced the impression then received, both of your teaching and of something more comprehensive than teaching, which contact with you engendered, and which impels me to take this opportunity—late in the day as it is—to express and to thank you for.... I had a most keen desire to visit Cheltenham and the buildings and institutions which embody in so grand a manner the impress which my childish mind received.’

There is also ample evidence that the professors and lady-visitors of the College highly esteemed Miss Beale’s work there. ‘The flattering regard in which you are held at Queen’s,’ wrote her father to her just after she had left the College, are words fully justified by other letters which exist.

It is clear that this spring of work was full of hope and delight, as well as of scrupulous effort. Dorothea Beale possessed at this time a growing confidence in her own powers, educational ideals which were slowly shaping themselves, and a consciousness of her fitness for the work on which she was engaged.

Then, at the end of 1856, the connection with Queen’s College came rather abruptly to an end by Miss Beale’s own wish. She appears to have been some time feeling that there was a tendency for the whole administration of the College to get too much into the hands of one person; and that there was consequently not enough scope for that womanly influence which she felt to be so important where the education of young girls is concerned. She returned to her work after the summer holiday of 1856—a holiday spent in visiting Swiss and German schools—to find the power of the lady-visitors more restricted than ever. In fact, she said, ‘the time had come when it could be truly said, “the lady-visitors have no power.”’ As she was not in a position to effect the changes she desired, she sent in her resignation, and her friend and fellow-teacher, Miss Rowley, did the same. The actual moment for doing this in November seems to have been decided for Miss Beale by hearing she could obtain the post of head-teacher at Casterton.

Miss Beale’s connection with Queen’s College had been long and close, and her gratitude to it was so great that she hoped to be allowed to resign without explanation. This was during the headship of Dr. Plumptre. When Miss Beale’s resignation reached him, he urged her to make the reasons for it known, and his letter on the subject shows something of the consideration in which she was held.

‘If there is an evil which cannot be remedied, are you right in leaving those to whom the welfare of the College is very dear to all the discomfort of feeling or imagining that there is something amiss without giving them any clue to that which, whatever it be, has been at all important enough to lead you to resign? Are you right in exposing the College itself to the consequence of the construction which will inevitably be put upon your conduct—whether that construction be true or false? I may form three or four conjectures as to the motives that have led you to this decision—but it is all guess work—I think the decision itself to be deplored. We shall lose an able and earnest fellow-worker. You will lose a position of great usefulness—you give up a work to which you have been called and opportunities of doing good. I believe that these lamentable results might have been avoided, but it is too late for this; there is at any rate time for the openness which, I think, we have a right to look for.

‘I will not end without thanking you for your consideration in calling to tell me what you had done, and for all the assistance you have given me in my College work.—I am, yours most sincerely,

E. H. Plumptre.’

Miss Beale finally gave the desired explanation with full detail and this preface:—

‘Before consenting to answer any questions, I think it right that we should state that when we sent in our resignation, we naturally supposed we should be allowed to do so without being required to give any reasons.

‘It was only after several weeks of resistance that, at the earnest appeal of Mr. Plumptre, who placed it before us as a moral duty, that we at last reluctantly consented to speak to him and to the Lady Visitors. From the course we adopted, I think you will see we are prompted [solely] ... by a desire for the good of a College in which we feel the warmest interest.’

The defects she deplored—pioneer mistakes she called them later—were then enumerated in detail, and she dwelt especially on the hindrance to education caused by so much authority being left to one individual, who could not possibly be in a position to know the abilities and standard of work of every pupil. Much harm, she pleaded, had been done

‘by withdrawing pupils from the school, compelling them without my consent and contrary to the wishes of their parents to attend College classes, although they are unable to spell correctly and are ignorant of the first principles of grammar; classes in which you know it is impossible to give that individual attention required by children of twelve, who, owing to the rank from which so many of our pupils are now derived, are singularly deficient in mental training, and require to be obliged in extra time to do work given them; to be trained, watched, educated by ladies (who alone can understand, and therefore truly educate) girls. My pupils in the school are not removed by competent professors who understand the subjects there taught. The instruction which is in itself good, and if given four or five years later would be beneficial, has been rendered useless.’

On learning Miss Beale’s reasons for leaving, and that her decision was irrevocable, Mr. Plumptre wrote: ‘I wish to state at once that I believe most thoroughly that what you have done has been done conscientiously because it seemed to you—painful as it was—to be in the line of duty.’ But before this letter reached her, Dorothea had accepted another post, that of head-teacher in the Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton.

CHAPTER III
CASTERTON

‘O lift your natures up:

Embrace our aims.’

Tennyson, The Princess, ii.

‘It was a year full of great suffering mingled with a peace which the world cannot give.... I look on this as one of the most profitable years of my life, but I could not long have borne the strain of work and anxiety.’

Thus, long after, when in the distance of years the events of earlier life could be seen in their relation to each other and to the future, Miss Beale wrote of the year at Casterton. But she did not often speak of it. To the end it gave her pain to go in thought over that time of loneliness and strain. Even late in life, if she entered into conversation about it, she would turn from the subject saying it distressed her too much; ‘some other time she would try’ to speak of it. But, none the less, she knew she had gained much at Casterton. She, who was ever ready to learn from mistakes, from pain, from adverse circumstances, gratefully acknowledged her debt to all that had shown her the real difficulties of her vocation, and her own weakness, and which had deepened her consciousness of the only source of strength. Some lives are led so much at haphazard, that it really hardly appears to matter whether at any given period they have taken one direction or another. In the lives of those who, like Dorothea Beale, are always conscious of an over-ruling and ordering Power, every year is not only known, but seen to have its place. The very errors, nay failures, are sunk deep into the foundations to become supports to the House of Life which, under the direction of the Master Builder, is rendered more stately with each added touch of Time. Hence, this year—not a successful one, as success is generally reckoned—has its special interest.

It was a year in which she learned much, not only about herself individually, but of feminine human nature in general. Those matters which she longed—and longed ineffectually at the time—to re-arrange in the system and time-tables she found existing at Casterton, prepared her for the organisation of the great school to which she was shortly afterwards to be called. Daily contact with many, who were more or less out of sympathy with her, must have been useful for one whose work was largely to be in the direction of influence on women and girls of varying natures and opinions. Doubtless the very loneliness of the position was bracing to her sensitive nature. ‘Above all,’ she had written to Mr. Plumptre when she accepted it, ‘it involves leaving home.’ She had seen from the first how hard a trial this would be to her, but strength and insight were won out of the suffering it cost.

The manuscript account from which the opening words of this chapter are taken, and which has been quoted before, was written many years ago. As late as 1905 Miss Beale wrote to Canon Burton, the present vicar of Casterton and chaplain to the school, that she felt she owed much to it, and ‘in grateful remembrance of her connection with it’ founded a scholarship from the school to Cheltenham. The first Casterton-Beale scholar is now at the Ladies’ College.

There were many reasons why Dorothea Beale could neither be happy nor rightly appreciated at Casterton in 1857. She went at a difficult moment when the school had not recovered from the relaxed discipline consequent on the troubles of the year before. There had been a serious outbreak of scarlet fever, the Lady Superintendent herself being one of the victims. The head-teacher had left in September, and it was not convenient to supply her place before the end of the half-year. The ‘School for Clergymen’s Daughters’ is one, like many others, of which it is the reverse of disparagement to say that its present is far above its past. And it is permissible to think that if Miss Beale had found herself in any other large boarding-school of the period, she would have encountered many of the same difficulties and disappointments as those which beset her life at Casterton. Of this school she wrote much later, describing it as she felt it to be when she was there, that it was ‘in an unhealthy state. There was a spirit of open irreligion and a spirit of defiance very sad to witness; but the constant restraints, the monotonous life, the want of healthy amusements were in a great measure answerable for this.’[20] A strange tale this to us, who know of the walks and rambles, the games and matches enjoyed by the girls of Casterton to-day.

But the causes of her dissatisfaction were by no means due entirely to the school, for the engagement seems to have been entered upon on Miss Beale’s part without a real understanding of all that it involved. Her father hints this when he writes, ‘perhaps we were to blame in not learning more.’ She was engaged, not by the Lady Superintendent, but by a member of the Committee, who probably did not explain matters so fully as a woman might have done. The work was taken up in a moment of impulse, as if she were glad of the opportunity it suggested of sending in her resignation to Queen’s College, instead of waiting till Christmas, as she had at first intended. Those who knew her best did not expect her to be happy in it. Mr. Plumptre wrote: ‘I am glad to hear you have found so important a work before you as that at Casterton. It may have altered within the last few years, as otherwise I should not have thought its tone, religious as well as social, likely to be congenial to you.’

She had never lived away from home for any length of time. The short periods of school life had been shared with sisters. The north was an unknown land with which the Beale family had no connection. She knew nothing of country life. She would be entirely among strangers, and that alone, for a shy and sensitive nature, is often a great trial, while boarding-school life, such as existed at Casterton, was practically unknown to her. The salary was smaller than what she had received at Queen’s College. But in leaving Queen’s College she lost far more than salary. There she had been a beloved teacher, a valued tutor whose resignation was deplored; at Casterton she was simply a new governess. Her judgment was surely at fault in thus hastily and almost impulsively accepting such a post. Though she may have greeted the offer as guidance in her difficulty about leaving Queen’s, she must have known that at Casterton it would be impossible for her to work in accord with religious opinions which were alien to her; also that in going so far she was cutting off much that was congenial and delightful from her life—such as home, friends, libraries, lectures.

Though Mr. Beale obviously doubted if his daughter could be happy in the atmosphere of Casterton, he did not fail to perceive the ideal side of the work there. Appreciating the aims and generosity of the founders of the school, he held that from the great advantages it offered, it ought to become a national institution. She too went to her post there in something of a missionary spirit. Her success with her classes, and with pupils of different ages, justified her in feeling that she would be able to introduce fresh and better methods, while the very fact that a teacher of her individual experience had been chosen pointed to the belief that the authorities were anxious to bring the school into line with the advance of women’s education.

Casterton is a small village, near Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland, where that county touches Lancashire and Yorkshire. Even to-day railway communication is defective, and the country thinly populated, so that the school in its isolated position is constrained to be as self-sufficing as possible. The beauty of its surroundings may surely be reckoned among its advantages, for it is placed amid lovely country within sight of Ingleborough. Members of the school speak with delight of rambles over the surrounding fells. Perhaps Miss Beale’s habit of thinking over her lessons out of doors began here, for she afterwards told Miss Alston of the long lonely walks she used to take at Casterton.

This well-known school was founded in 1823 by Mr. Carus Wilson in order to help the clergy of the Church of England, principally those of the northern dioceses. Many of the clergy of the north were known to be absolutely unable to provide any education for their children, who at home led the simplest life with bare necessaries only. Several of these were received, boarded, educated, and partially clothed free, and the terms for all were ludicrously small. These facts should be remembered when comment is made upon the régime at Casterton, or at Cowan Bridge, where the school was originally placed, a position far less favourable and healthy than its present one.

It should also be remembered that Dorothea Beale had never herself known what it was to be poor; she could hardly realise, for instance, the comfort that might exist in the uniform school dress for children whose parents were actually too poor to provide them with proper clothing.

As an institution the school was destined not only to assist the poor clergy, but, springing as it did from devoted religious effort, to save souls and promote the highest kind of education. It was from the first definitely associated with those ‘Calvinistic opinions’ on account of which the Bishop of Chester had rejected its founder for ordination in 1814.[21] The dark horror of Calvinism, permitted doubtless as a scourge after much open irreligion and careless living, was in mercy overruled in countless instances for the conviction of sin, and generally to prepare the way for a wider and more comprehending acceptance of the grace which is in Christ Jesus. But its direct results on the education of the young were disastrous indeed. Hearts, by its agency, were turned to stone, or depressed into hopeless terror; worst of all, religious forms, phraseology, even emotions were assumed by those who were prone to self-deception, or over anxious to please.

About 1845 Mr. Carus Wilson’s health broke down as a consequence of his unsparing and strenuous labours, and the management of his schools passed into the hands of others. In 1857 the Clergy Daughters’ School was governed by a Committee of six clergymen, all personal friends of the founder, men of good standing in the neighbourhood. Archdeacon Evans was Chairman. This Committee sought to obtain the best teachers possible for what was then—even more than now—an out-of-the-way place, as far as the centres of education were concerned. They also aimed at fitting the girls in the school to earn their own living.

High testimonials were given to Miss Beale by the professors and lady-visitors of Queen’s College, on her appointment as head-teacher at Casterton. One from Prebendary Mackenzie is of special interest, as it shows that in accepting the work she had not in any way identified herself with the particular religious views then prevailing in the institution.

‘Westbourne College, Bayswater Road, November 1856.

‘I am happy to be able to give very satisfactory replies to your enquiries respecting Miss D. Beale. She is a young lady of high moral and religious character, sober-minded and discreet. Her parents have been careful to avoid party views, and I have no doubt Miss Dorothea Beale is free from them. She certainly is a most conscientious person, with a deep sense of her religious responsibilities. I feel certain that her influence will always be for good.’

Mr. Plumptre wrote to the Lady Superintendent:—

‘I am unwilling that (Miss Beale) should enter on her work at Casterton without your hearing from me ... the high opinion which I entertained both as to her attainments and her conscientiousness in discharging any duties that may be assigned her.... I am convinced that in receiving her at Casterton you will gain a fellow-worker in whose zeal and Christian principle you may place entire confidence.’

And Mr. Denton:—

‘I should esteem any institution fortunate that had her services. She is a person of quiet, sincere piety, and an intelligent Churchwoman.’

Dorothea Beale went to Casterton on the Epiphany, January 6, 1857. Her diary of 1891 records the memory of this and of the Holy Eucharist at St. Bartholomew’s at six o’clock, before her long day’s journey, a journey which ended almost in terror, so alarming to this daughter of the City were the ‘high, wild hills and rough, uneven ways’ which had to be crossed between the railway station and the school.

At first, as was natural, she seems to have thought she would like her work. Mrs. Wedgwood, writing to her in February, says: ‘I felt so much our loss in you that I could hardly join in the wishes of the lady-visitors of Queen’s that you might find your new work pleasant. However, I am truly glad now that you find your new home more agreeable than you had been led to expect, and that you think the children are happy, and times are unlike Jane Eyre.’

Very soon the strain of teaching the large number of subjects required to be taught began to be felt. A less conscientious worker might have entered lightly upon these at a period when only the most superficial textbook knowledge was required; but to Dorothea Beale, to whom each lesson meant much preparation and thought, they soon became a burden. She said afterwards that the work left her no time for exercise or recreation, and not enough for sleep. She found herself expected to teach Scripture, arithmetic, mathematics, ancient, modern, and Church history, physical and political geography, English literature, grammar and composition, French, German, Latin, and Italian. Of the last she had written when she accepted the post: ‘I do not know much of Italian, I will, however, take lessons till Christmas.’

It was obviously impossible for one person to teach all these subjects properly, and it is not surprising that Miss Beale soon wrote home that she found the work hard; she does not seem to have complained of anything else. She said, among other things, that she took eight Bible-classes every week, two of which consisted of about fifty girls at a time. Her father replied with the evident intention of bracing and cheering:—

‘Employment is a blessed state, it is to the body what sleep is to the mind.... I cannot be sorry when I hear you are fully employed. I am sure it will be usefully, and then by and bye when the body and the mind alike have perished, and work and sleep are no longer needed, but the soul shall burst into existence, how shall we wonder at the willing slaves we have been during our probation, for the meat which perishes. You see I am thoughtful,—it is fit.... I feel I can bear your being so far and so entirely away, with some philosophy, and I am delighted that your letters bear the tone of contentment, and that you have been taken notice of by people who seem disposed to be kind to you.... You will see I have not a thing to tell you, and I cannot now write any more about thick coming fancies, but give an old man’s love to all your pupils, and may they make their Fathers as happy as you do. God bless you, my dear Dorothea.’

This letter was written in March 1857. Shortly after came another for her birthday on the 21st, showing how much her absence from home was felt, and that the parents were doubtful if she were in the right place.

‘God bless you and give you many happy birthdays. I fear the present is not one of the most agreeable; it is spent at least in the path of what you considered duty, and so will never be looked back upon but with pleasure.... Do not, however, my dear girl, think of remaining long in a position which may be irksome to you, for thus I think it will hardly be profitable to others, and indeed I question whether you would maintain your health where the employment was so great and duty the only stimulus to action. You have heard me often quote: “The hand’s best sinew ever is the heart.”’

In May another letter is evidently called forth by some expression of a longing to be at home, and perhaps by hints of difficulties from Dorothea.

‘May 1857.

‘I think I feel the weeks go more slowly than you do. I long to see you again very much. I cannot get reconciled to your position and feel satisfied that it is your place.... God bless you, my dear girl, and blunt your feelings for the rubs of the world, and quicken your vision for the beautiful and unseen of the world above us.’

The last words show how well her father knew the sensitive nature hurt even by trifles, and prone to take small matters too seriously.

So the long half wore on, and we know, from some of the few who remain to tell, that Miss Beale was making her mark at Casterton. There were many there who could appreciate her careful work and inspiring lessons. Some found especially valuable her accurate teaching of Latin and mathematics, and the enormous pains she took to make her lessons intelligible to the dullest; never content to let them merely accept a given fact or explanation, but leading them on step by step to see and comprehend. Her literature classes, again, led some into a new world of ideas and thoughts, and they responded to the thrill of some noble and beautiful line which would cause their teacher’s eyes to fill with tears as she read. One, who was Miss Beale’s pupil in the first class at Casterton at this time, speaks of it with extreme gratitude:—

‘I was seventeen, and had only had home teaching before. Great was the delight to be taught by one whom you felt to be complete mistress of any subject she undertook. I was a dunce at Arithmetic and Euclid. She cut slips of paper to illustrate the Pons Asinorum, etc., and with her aid I mastered the first book of Euclid, which has always been useful to me. Latin grammar we also learned from Miss Beale. She instilled strict accuracy by making us write verbs and declensions from memory. Out of class she showed us much friendliness, inviting us to her room in the evening, when sometimes she would read aloud to us, sometimes tell us about the students at Queen’s. It interested us to hear of those not very young ones who wore caps. Her appearance, as I remember it then, was charming. Her figure was of medium height. The rather pale oval face, high, broad forehead, large, expressive grey eyes, all showed intellectual character. Her dress was remarkable in its neatness. She wore black cashmere in the week, and a pretty, mouse-coloured grey dress on Sundays.’

A little notebook remains to show how she prepared her lessons; how little she was content with repetition acquired by rote. There are also one or two little books of Scripture notes belonging to this time, interesting as the first of an immense series, marking the beginning of the work which was to be her great means of influence. One of these is on the Book of Proverbs, a book she never read again with a class; it was probably not her own choice at this time. The lessons she drew from it were of the most practical nature for daily life, and contain much teaching on true and false unworldliness. She had even then the satisfaction of knowing that her Bible teaching was acceptable to many. She wrote home: ‘Several of the first class make a practice of taking notes and afterwards copy them out into a book. This I never tell them to do, nor do I so far encourage it as to look at the notes after they are written. In the lower part of the school I do not allow them to take notes without special permission.’

Some notes on the Church services show traces of the pain she felt over instances of irreverence which she had seen in the school. Those who remember the almost awful silence in which Miss Beale’s Scripture lessons at Cheltenham were given, how she wished it to signify the humility and reverence of spirit necessary for those who would study God’s Word, can understand how she must have suffered when she saw flippant and careless behaviour at prayers and Bible classes.

Amongst the numbers of children, many who had been comparatively untaught before they were brought into this continual round of religious exercise, it is not surprising to find that there were some who disliked the appeal made to heart and conscience, and who found this strict sense of reverence irksome. There was even one naughty girl who in these first days refused to attend Miss Beale’s classes.

It is clear that Miss Beale conveyed to her classes and to her fellow-workers, that she had come to Casterton in a missionary spirit. Though there were many who could appreciate her sacrifice in doing this, it placed her at a disadvantage with others. She knew herself to be in the forefront of women’s education, she knew that this school, for all the excellent intention of the authorities, could not be abreast of the movement; but she failed to realise, until she personally experienced it, that a self-appointed guide is not always welcomed.

In the summer holidays, which Miss Beale spent at home, it was noticed that she was much depressed. The second half-year’s work began in August. Doubtless she had talked over her difficulties, and her parents knew that she might soon give up her work. Soon after her return she seems to have written very strongly about things she would have liked to alter. Especially was she troubled by the low tone prevailing, the want of respect for authority, the mischief making and unhealthy friendships. She found this important school through which pious intention and effort strove to help the very poorest by protecting them from all dangerous influences, by instilling definite religious opinions of a certain type, by giving such an education as should be an effective means of livelihood, very far from being the ideal college of her dreams. She began to specify her dissatisfaction and to form ideas for radical improvement. She thought its isolation against it, and that it was a drawback to have only one class of girls; she felt there should have been more communication with home,—some of the children did not even go home for the holidays;—that the life was too monotonous and uniform. Above all she deprecated a repressive system which had punishments but no prizes; a system in which all the virtues were negative, the highest obtainable being obedience to the ever-repeated ‘Thou shalt not.’

It was not possible for Dorothea Beale to see anything wrong, and to act as if in any way consenting to it, by going on quietly with her own share like one not called upon to take a leading part. She felt that steps might be taken to improve some of the matters which distressed her, and after efforts which seemed to her ineffectual, she sought an interview with the Committee. Her father was kept fully informed of what she was thinking and striving to do, as may be seen by the following extracts from his letters to her:—

‘1857.

‘I think we must be content to wait, at any rate for the present, and see if any good comes from your interview with the Committee. You notice two points chiefly,—the low moral tone of the school, and the absence of prizes. The want of sympathy and love (the great source of woman’s influence in every condition of life) was the prominent feature of the establishment in my mind, after talking it over with you. But nothing can flourish if love be not the ruling incentive, and this must be awakened by the teacher and Principal showing that for it they sacrifice any consideration of self. This I know my dear girl, you entirely do, and you do it ineffectually, nay, perhaps worse than uselessly, if you are not supported. But, as you have gone so far, be not easily discouraged. Weigh the matter well before this Christmas, and if you find no changes are made, the same cold management continued, with the negation of confidence in the pupils as instanced in the matter of letters, etc., send in your resignation, and above all, state your reasons as they bear upon the school, and upon yourself and the class you represent.

‘I cannot contemplate your not coming up at Christmas. As we grow older, each year makes us more desirous of the company of those we love; perhaps because we feel how soon we shall part with it altogether, perhaps because we are become more selfish, but such is the fact.’

And again on the same subject:—

‘September 2, 1857.

‘I cannot think you would be right to say you sought to be put into communication with the Committee because you heard that they were not satisfied. Surely your application [to see them] came first. I wrote because I thought the position and designation of head-teacher to you implied responsibilities in connection with the authorities; because you thought the general moral tone of the school lower than it should be, and the discipline to correct it defective; because your counsel was not sought, or, if given, not much heeded. Perhaps we were to blame in not learning more, that the head-teacher was only an ordinary teacher at Casterton. But the world would [think it more]; and your own experience of classes ought to enable you to be a judge of what was reasonable to expect in the bearing of pupils, both educational and general. I know your feelings, not to quit hastily what you have chosen, and considered a post of duty, and in writing upon the subject I try to put out of the question my own feelings and those of your mother to have you at home, or at least nearer home, and really to view the matter from the same point of view as yourself. Your remaining at Casterton is, I think, only to be entertained if such changes in the management are made as are likely in your view to raise the character of the establishment. I feel your own education and standing are worthy of better things [than the position] of an ordinary teacher at Casterton, and of a better salary. But I cannot doubt if you fairly and without hesitation state your objections and views, you will convince some at least that you are acting independently and without any personal feelings ... I am much as I was, anxious about you all, conscious how little I can do, and praying that we may all see clearly that the game of life, whoever may be the players, is not one of chance or destiny; ... Write to me when you can—Ever your affectionate father,

Miles Beale.’

It was unusual though not unknown for a teacher at Casterton to appeal to the Committee, and the six gentlemen who composed it, were not very eager to hear Miss Beale. They may have suspected personal motives, and some of them, no doubt, mistrusted her religious principles. Miss Beale has left notes of her interview, so interesting to us, as the first occasion on which she tried to gain her own ends—always the best—from a body of persons who were in the position of directors of education. It suggests a contrast with the Cheltenham Council meetings of her last years, when her lightest wish had weight.

The way had been prepared for her by letters which had passed between the chairman (Archdeacon Evans) and her father. In her first interview, which was of a preliminary nature, she began by saying: ‘I wished before saying anything, to know whether it was their wish to hear what I had to say, or whether they would rather I did not speak. There was a hesitation. Then Mr. Morewood, in rather a doubtful way said they were always willing. I said I understood from the Committee last time, and the Chairman’s letters to my father, that they wished it; then the others joined in with “Oh yes, certainly.”’ After making her statements on the need for reform, Miss Beale concluded by saying she should be happy to resign if the Committee were dissatisfied. The reply was: ‘Oh no, certainly not.’

At a second interview, the Committee allowed her to put before them her own suggestions for alterations. On this occasion Miss Beale began with a testimony to what the Lady Superintendent had effected in the school; then mentioned the prevailing faults which so much distressed her, especially irreverence and unsuitable language; then boldly went on to point out the details of the system which might easily be improved, notably, that some prizes might be given, and that letters to and from parents should not be supervised. She said:—

‘I think an institution in which the government is entirely by punishments not likely to produce the best moral effects. I think that reports should be sent home more frequently than twice a year.’ On being asked to give instances of disregard of religion, she mentioned one or two in general terms, saying she should not think it right to give individual examples. Mr. Rose replied by saying, ‘Unfortunately, such things will occur in large schools; perhaps you came expecting to find clergymen’s daughters better than others.’ Some discussion took place on the subject of prizes, during which ‘occurred the very sapient remark that we do hear of angels being punished, but not of their going up higher, etc.... I afterwards explained what I meant by rewards, viz., distinctions, privileges, and the opportunity of doing good ... and I concluded by saying that unless I felt that the institution were doing moral good I should not care to stay.’

The interview had been less disagreeable than she had anticipated; she thought her complaint had had a fair hearing, and in spite of the strain of work and the anxiety connected with it, she felt her efforts were not wasted.

‘So many,’ she wrote home, ‘ask if they may come and speak to me; more of them listen when I talk of religion, and come privately to ask advice which I know they try to follow. I do feel that I am of use.... I believe I ought to wait here until either I feel it wrong to stay, or God calls me elsewhere. He has given me much more strength than I had any reason to expect. I shall look forward with greater longing for Christmas; but do get me the papers I want as soon as you can. I want to do as much as possible before I leave.

‘I wrote this last night; take care of it as well as the Committee paper; I may want them. I have a headache to-day, and I am afraid I show the effect. Do not tell Papa anything, if you think it will worry him, but let me have some advice and hear as often as you can.’

But discomfort almost inevitably succeeds complaint. There were fresh interviews with the Committee; some of the matters which most tried her in the school régime were naturally more acutely felt, as she herself grew strained with both anxiety and work. The tone of her letters home grew more sad as she began to see that after all she must give up her post. She could not bear to relinquish work that she felt had been given her to do; but she wrote:—

‘I do not see how it is possible to do much good. I may work upon a few individuals, but the whole tone of the school is unhealthy, and I never felt anything like the depression arising from the constant jar upon one’s feelings caused by seeing great girls constantly professing not to care about religion.... It is next to impossible to bear rudeness and hear so much evil-speaking about all set over them, and keep up one’s spirits so as to be able to teach energetically; I would not want to run away if I thought I could do much good by staying, but I have come to the conclusion that it is time to send in my resignation. I have gained valuable experience, and do not think I have been useless; but under present circumstances it does not seem possible to get on.

‘I was very glad of your nice long letter before, and if you think I am right, should send in perhaps a slight summary of the causes for it with my resignation as soon as I can. I am glad to hear Mama is better.’

Miss Beale’s difficulties were no doubt aggravated by religious questions. Her chief friend on the Committee, one who appreciated her sense of duty and intellectual power, did not wish her to remain at the school. He disliked her theological opinions. She seems hardly to have realised this at the time, though her father may have done so, as can be seen from the following letter:—

‘November 8, 1857.

‘Say, if you have an opportunity, as much of what you have written to the Committee as will show them you sought the situation at Casterton for the sake of the school. For this I accepted for you—for this alone. Do not retain it without sufficient authority to carry forward the minds and morals of the pupils. You went there in a missionary spirit, I know, as to a post of usefulness; and you have hitherto retained it in the same spirit. Maintain this feeling, but assert it with meekness. We shall all be rejoiced to find you are coming home; but I dare not urge you beyond this. I was a party to the compact by which your remuneration was arranged, and I felt no difficulty in making any concession between what I felt was due to the order of educated governesses which you represented, and what the institution could afford to pay; but I would not recommend you to compromise one iota of authority which may be fit to carry forward the minds of your pupils, or of discipline to enforce obedience. Your pupils are no longer children, and, as the daughters of clergymen and intended to teach others, are lights upon a hill, and in point of education, manners, and morals, great charges indeed. I am witness, too, how roundly and unequivocally you stated your religious principle.... I mention this much because I think you have been treated unfairly on this subject. If the denial of the doctrine of regeneration by baptism were a sine quâ non by the governess, it ought to have been so stated. Mr. Mariner represented their religious basis as far more broad. Doubtless the Committee have a right to limit the assent of their teachers to such points; and doing so, I cannot object to Mr. Shepheard’s voting for your exclusion, neither do I see how they can accept money from those who think differently from the Committee. It is a question which has divided larger societies than at Casterton ... and I can remember when it convulsed the Choral Society.... You and I are both labouring to raise the status and influence of the governess, and you will do it, first by your attainments and education, and rectitude of conduct under all circumstances, and I by bringing before those public bodies interested in the matter, the influence and importance of legislating for their protection and recognition. We may neither of us live to see the changes which shall come, but even in our limited spheres we are breaking ground, and you are gaining whilst yet young most valuable experience.

‘ ... Above all things take care of your health.... I am quite sure that you have a long course of usefulness before you. The flattering regard in which you are held at Queen’s College, and the constant means you always have in London of constantly improving yourself, must teach you somewhat of your own value; though I would not indeed presume upon it farther than to give you confidence to act rightly. But good governesses are very scarce, and are far better treated than they used to be, though not as well as they deserve.

‘Casterton ought to be from the great advantages it offers, a national institution; but it will not be so if its principles are narrowed by anything like sectarian jealousy, or if its standard of education be not high. But Casterton has not yet been as fortunate as the good intentions of its founder would seem to deserve. The time will come, I hope, when this and kindred establishments will seek the visit and inspection of examiners from the Board of Government, Inspectors of Schools, and governesses.... I write to you when I begin currente calamo, and could do so much longer upon a theme in which we are both interested, and I fear I have given you no direction. Fear nothing; be firm, but very gentle.’

The matter of the resignation seems to have been hanging on all through the month of November. Miss Beale evidently wrote home again for advice, for on the 26th she received another letter from her father:—

‘November 26, 1857.

‘Far from dissuading you from sending in your resignation, I think it will be expected. We did not appeal to the Committee that their attention should end in talk, but in giving you support moral and professional. With less than this, it is inconsistent with self-respect, or the duty you owe to the children, to remain.... Now Christmas is approaching, and, as matters remain as they were, certainly not improved,—I would seek at once to be relieved. Do not suppose for a moment I shall consider you are forsaking an appointment to which you have been called, or in which time would afford you redress.... Leave it then, and if nothing more congenial presents itself, we can afford to wait our time, and let us try together if we cannot carry forward, or at least make more widely known, our views of what might be effected if your half of the human family more extensively used that influence of which they are all the dispensers, as men are of their power. This is indeed, as Christ said to the woman of Samaria, “living water,” if derived from Him, satisfying all thirst from its welling up from within; and by its purity testing the value of everything it is brought in contact with. You say you have learned much at Casterton. What matters it if you have to wait for the Harvest that we are sure “we shall reap if we faint not,” and gather “fruit unto life eternal.” It is often in this world, indeed, that “one soweth and another reapeth,” but though delayed the seed is not lost.’

Before Miss Beale could formally send in her threatened resignation to the Committee, she received the following letter from the Chairman:—

‘On your last interview with the Committee you implied an intention of resigning in case certain alterations should not be made by the Committee....

‘The Committee are of opinion that under the circumstances it would be better that your connection with the school should cease after Christmas next, they paying you a quarter’s salary in advance.

It will readily be imagined that this summary step on the part of the Committee caused great distress to one of Miss Beale’s sensitive nature. Nor was it easy for her to see why the difficult part she had taken upon herself for the good of the school should be misunderstood. At that moment it must have seemed like a sentence of failure,—

‘For who can so forecast the years,

To find in loss a gain to match.’

Among the crowning successes of later life she recognised that the blow had had its place in fashioning her life’s work. Her letter home on the subject is not preserved, but the following is evidently an answer to it:—

‘December 1857.

‘My dear Girl,—Be sure I have been with you in heart every day and all day.... We shall all be delighted to have you at home. I would not have you commit yourself to writing statements on any account. You have given proof of the truth of your assertion by offering and sending in your resignation, and thus relinquishing your salary and the occupation of teaching to which you had felt yourself called, because you could not retain the one or follow the other conscientiously. Though you have not accomplished all you sought, you have sowed seed which will bear fruit; it may be for others’ benefit altogether; but to doubt the ultimate result were a want of faith. Whilst I object to writing, I think you owe it to yourself to seek rather than shun an interview with Mr. Wilson. His countenance of you I should consider very valuable.... Is not this again an instance of the influence of women, ... the dispensers of influence for good or evil? How important, then, to cultivate that principle of rightly discerning. Do you remember the apologue of Esdras? “The first wrote: Wine is the strongest. The second wrote: The king is the strongest. The third wrote: Women are strongest. But above all things Truth beareth away the victory.” How irresistible, then, is truth, if urged by the self-denial and patient perseverance of an enlightened and Christian woman! It is very possible, my dear Dorothea, that you have never been fairly represented or appreciated at Casterton, and now you are called to rest content with the consciousness of acting from right motives, secure that you possess too the regard and love of all those who can value such sacrifices as you have made of home, and ease, and peace for others’ good. I write in great haste, but I will write as often as you like until we see you.’

Thus was Dorothea cheered and supported from home. Encouragement came from others also. On December 7, Mr. Plumptre wrote:—

‘I have been informed to-day that you are going to leave Casterton at Christmas. I fear from this that you have not found your work there so pleasant as you hoped. If there are any particulars connected with your change of plan which you would like to tell me, or anything as to your prospects for the future, I need not say that I shall be glad to hear them. Should you feel disposed to resume any part of your work at Queen’s College? The place of Assistant is of course being worthily occupied, and so far as I know not likely to be vacant; but tutorships in Mathematics and other subjects might probably be open.’

Mr. Shepheard, curate-in-charge of Casterton, and chaplain to the school, wrote thus to Miss Beale on her leaving:—

‘It is natural that you should wish to have my testimony, and right that I should give it you regarding the line of conduct you have persevered in, and the difficult position in which you have been placed, as well as regarding your general principles.

‘It is no more than your due that I should say to others what I have said to yourself, that I think your conduct throughout the painful circumstances of your connection with the Clergy Daughters’ School has been such as to reflect the highest honour upon yourself. You have only done your duty in boldly expressing what you thought required correction in the school. And if your faithful discharge of that duty has brought discomfiture on yourself, you have the comfort of knowing that it is no dishonour to suffer for well-doing.

‘I have the greatest pleasure in offering you my cordial esteem and regard. And though there are points of religious doctrine, and those not small nor secondary, on which we must agree to differ, this cannot affect my opinion of the high principle and conscientious conduct which you have manifested throughout your stay at Casterton.

‘Of your abilities and acquirements I need not speak. They are well known here, and can better be described by those who have had the opportunity of witnessing and benefiting by them personally, than by myself; and of such witnesses there are no lack.

‘We shall always be glad to hear of your happiness, and hope to retain your friendship when removed to a distance from us.—I am, dear Miss Beale, very sincerely yours,

H. Shepheard (Incumbent).’

The letter shows, what was indeed true, that difficulties and differences both in the Committee and the school were aggravated by bitterness on the subject of religious opinions. This comes out still more clearly in a correspondence Miss Beale kept up for a little time with Mrs. Shepheard, who was a daughter of Mr. Carus Wilson, the aged founder of the school, and at this time infirm and worn by the immense labours of his younger days.

The Bishop and Dean of Carlisle, being called upon to advise the Committee, patiently heard evidence for eight hours. Mr. Carus Wilson also decided to visit the school himself; but before he went north, Mrs. Shepheard arranged an interview between him and Miss Beale, writing to her: ‘Do not be afraid of my beloved father—tall, grey-headed, and anxious, but clear and open as you please.’ A memorable meeting surely this, of two who with widely differing methods were alike in high, earnest aim and self-devotion. It took place in February, and in the same month Mr. Wilson made one of his last visits to his old home and flock. Mrs. Shepheard notes that ‘it is supposed that nine hundred were in this little church last Sunday to hear my father!’

In the course of the year 1858 many changes were made in the management of the Clergy Daughters’ School, and this chapter on Casterton may fitly close with an extract from a letter written to Miss Beale by her friend, Mrs. Greene, of Whittington Hall:—

‘ ... There was a little music yesterday evening at the Clergy School, and Miss Vincent asked me to be present. I know your kind heart will give interest to what goes on there, and so I waited till it was over to tell you how it went off, etc.... I assure you the performance was extremely good, and the girls’ manners and appearance were those of young English Gentlewomen; this I consider good praise. Miss Vincent appears to me the very person to fill so important a post.... We spoke much of you, she evidently appreciates you; and when the music was over, I went to one or two of the ladies near, and asked, “Were you acquainted with Miss Beale?” One came forward with a beaming face and replied, “Oh, I know her well, and have heard from her.” I replied, “So have I; and I shall write to her to-morrow.” I do not know who my friend was, but perhaps you will.

‘And now let me tell you how delighted I am you are so comfortable; that you are doing much good I am equally sure.... I hope we may sometimes meet. Would you even spare us a little time here? If so, I would offer you a hearty welcome.’

CHAPTER IV
AN INTERVAL

‘O dignitosa coscienza e netto

Come t’e picciol fallo amaro morso.’

Dante, Purgatorio, iii.

The early part of the year 1858 is the one period in the life of Dorothea Beale when she could have been called really free. It was a time when it became her part to choose what she would do; to wait for what was suitable, to decide between conflicting claims. She came home depressed, defeated, disappointed; but she had discovered her own weakness and real strength; she had increased her knowledge of human nature through some experience of a boarding-school and its Committee. She had learned for one thing, that it would be best for herself and for the world that she should be head of a school, and she submitted to wait for one. But in the meantime other calls and needs besides that of education were heard and considered.

The fact of apparent failure in her recent position at Casterton might have been taken as an indication that her energies should perhaps be directed to a fresh field of action. She was not under the necessity of earning her bread; she loved her home and had a circle of friends and interests about her. Various kinds of good work for others appealed to her, and her ability and gifts made it clear that she might have succeeded in other walks of life than the one in which her steps were finally directed.

Though Dorothea had inherited, in a strong degree, her father’s antipathy to a mariage de convenance, though she was far from regarding marriage as the necessary completion of a woman’s life, she had not—at this time at least—made any definite refusal of it. This is a subject to which it will not be necessary to return in Miss Beale’s life, devoted as it became to one great cause. But here, before her vocation had distinctly declared itself, it is right to say that in the course of events she was not only not without opportunities of marriage, she also gave it her full consideration. Flippant scholars might echo the words of Punch, ‘How different from us, Miss Beale and Miss Buss!’ But in the sense in which the words were intended, this was not true in either case. Suffice it to say, that Dorothea Beale knew what it was to be admired, loved, even for a short time engaged to be married. She knew also, among other experiences, what it was to sacrifice a girlish romance because it was right to put away vain regret; to forget the things that are behind, and in this matter as in others, to use any sense of personal loss in such a way that it strengthened her character.

To pass from this subject, which, as it happens, does not appear to have had any place in the short period which elapsed between Casterton and Cheltenham, it is interesting to note what kinds of work Miss Beale considered with a view to taking them up.

Philanthropic occupations in the ordinary sense of the term she had had but few. Her duties as a tutor at Queen’s College were first undertaken when she was still eighteen, and up to then her time had been filled with interests arising from her own education and that of her brothers. Yet, while at Queen’s, busy as she was, she had made time to aid one less fortunate than herself. In 1853 her friend Miss Alston consulted her how best to help a clever boy brought up in a charity school. Miss Beale volunteered to teach him Euclid and algebra, and for four months gave him a lesson a week in each of these subjects. In that time he went through the first four books of Euclid and part of the sixth. Miss Beale enjoyed these lessons, for her pupil was keen and intelligent and took a delight in working out things for himself. Doubtless he too responded to the teaching of one whose method was ever to lead a pupil on to perceive a truth before accepting it. When, after a time, he came under the instruction of the headmaster of a public school, the latter remarked to Miss Alston à propos of Miss Beale’s teaching: ‘What a well-balanced head your friend must have!’

She had never, however, been engaged in the Sunday School teaching and visiting of the poor, such as was not infrequently undertaken by thoughtful girls of her day. Her strong intellectual bent, her well-defined sense of purpose possibly kept her from even good occupations which might have seemed desultory. But one kind of work for others seems actually to have been considered. This was in connection with Mrs. Lancaster whom for some years Miss Beale had helped by collecting money for the Church Penitentiary Association, and for a Diocesan Home at Highgate. Mrs. Lancaster became in 1861 the founder of St. Peter’s Sisterhood. She died in 1874. ‘She was,’ says one who knew her, ‘a very remarkable woman, of great charm and cleverness, and wholly devoted to the service of God.’ Her letters to Miss Beale at this time show that she was at once drawn to her young helper, so active in inspiring others to share in the good work, so punctual in her payments.

It was work in which Miss Beale was interested all her life, to which she gave largely, and which she ever promoted as far as her much filled time and thought permitted. Mrs. Lancaster greeted her first sign of interest with a warm welcome to the new worker. ‘Indeed, it was a great joy to me to see another drawn in by the Good Shepherd to help in seeking His lost sheep. May He bless and strengthen your will and power for the work.’

Dorothea appears to have been an assistant secretary, and to have collected money from her sisters and friends for this object. It is unnecessary, perhaps, to say that this money was always paid on the same date of each year.

After a time, when it seemed likely that Miss Beale would not remain at Casterton, Mrs. Lancaster obviously hoped to find in her one who would give up her life and talents to this cause. ‘I wish,’ she wrote, ‘for the sake of poor Penitents that you were more free, for I fancy you are a real, steady, orderly doer, and that is worth much in such a cause. Still, you do what you can, and may well be grateful to help in any way. Thank your sister too very much; it is very delightful to get young interest.’

Then, when an occasion arrived on which it was absolutely necessary to find a worker for the Highgate Home, she wrote: ‘Are you sure that you don’t know of a really good young lady not over accomplished, and she need know neither Greek nor Hindostanee, who would come and live at the Home, with a salary of £30 only, and poor people’s diet?’ This was followed by a still more practical suggestion: ‘Is there any chance (I don’t like the word) of your liking to take the Headship of a large Penitentiary to be worked by Sisters, but the whole under strict, honest, English principles—more like Kaiserwerth than anything we have now?’ Dorothea’s answer seems to have emboldened Mrs. Lancaster to make a definite suggestion to her to come herself, either as a Sister or a lay worker, and the following note from Mrs. Lancaster, written during the summer holidays of the Casterton year, shows that the idea was to some extent entertained. It is interesting also in the history of the work and institution established by that lady.

‘As your mind does not altogether say “No” to my proposal at once, I write a line to beg you not to decide against the thought of what I wrote to you about, without weighing very seriously these considerations:

‘What is the highest work?

‘What constitutes a call to God’s service?

‘Is it lawful to give up a higher for a lower work?

‘If, when you have considered it well, you feel at all drawn towards it, then will you write either to me or to the Rev. John Oliver of St. Mary’s House of Mercy, Highgate, appointing with him to see you (for the appointment is in his hands), and he will not make it unless he is fully convinced that the lady would work it on strictly English principles, and that her heart was given to God first. He is very earnest and very honest, and all there seems most hopeful if regarded as a beginning and a foundation, for at present there are only two Sisters and one other lady at work. The house and grounds are delightful, the Penitents in a good healthy state, and if but a wise lady is given to the work I should be very hopeful of seeing there, such a Sisterhood as we have talked about but have not been privileged to see growing up in English soil. Pray do consult your sister, or your parents, but please confidentially, as I think we ought to do these preliminaries as quietly as possible. I have mentioned your name quite in confidence to Mr. Oliver, and I do hope you will see him and talk it out to the bottom with him before you decide. I know you will do what is better than all, ask for guidance that cannot fail.

‘I do not think your parents would object, after allowing you to go to Casterton and Queen’s College, because in point of position, this is now felt to be all that a lady need care about. I am so very anxious about Highgate because it seems so hopeful as regards soundness of principle now, but I will say no more excepting to beg you to remember that the appointment does not rest with me even if you felt you could and would take it.—Ever yours affectionately and sincerely,

Rosa: Lancaster.’

It is probable that Mrs. Lancaster’s friendship and the glimpse of Sisterhood life which she obtained by means of it deepened the sense of vocation with which Miss Beale was prepared to take up the new work for which she was waiting in 1858. It may also have had its influence on outside matters such as dress, which we know, when engaged on her work of teaching, was in early days especially very plain and simple. Mrs. Lancaster was obviously a friend whom she revered, one to whom she could speak of religious matters, and with whose devoted work among poor women she fully sympathised; but the conventual side of it never really appealed to her.

Through Miss Twining, who began her work in 1850, Miss Beale became much interested in the reform of workhouses, and the idea even passed through her mind of seeking a position as matron in order to help to promote a better state of affairs. We can only wonder what would have been wrought had that great personality and unwearied diligence, that refusal to accept anything but the best, been brought to bear on the Poor Law, on Vestries, or Boards of Guardians.

The education of girls of her own class was of far deeper interest to her than any other work for women. She was trained for it, was conscious of her own power and knowledge of what a school should be, and she decided to wait till she could find a headship and carry out her own ideas. It was not quite easy to find the post she wanted. As she put it herself, ‘They might say, “She could not get on at Queen’s, she could not get on at Casterton”’; and it is obvious from her diary, that though she was actually told as early as January 1858 of the possible vacancy at Cheltenham, she tried for more than one school before she was elected there in June.

While she waited, she worked. There was plenty of home interest, a pleasant circle of friends about her: she took her share in the life of others, and yet led her own and accomplished a large amount in those few months. During a part of this time she gave weekly lessons in mathematics and Latin at Miss Elwall’s school at Barnes, a school which afterwards became well known under Miss Eliza Beale, already in 1858 an assistant teacher there. But the great occupation of these months was The Student’s Textbook of English and General History.

In point of time this important work was the third book produced by Miss Beale, and a word on its first predecessor will not be out of place here.

The little volume on the Deaconesses’ Institution at Kaiserwerth was the outcome of a visit there during one of two summers passed in Germany for the sake of studying schools and foreign methods of education. Miss Beale stayed for a few days with the founder, Pastor Fliedner, and his wife, and studied each department of work. She was specially pleased with the Hospital and Sunday-school, of which she wrote with much appreciation: ‘I never was present at a lesson which seemed to give so much pleasure to children and listeners, as well as to the teacher, who certainly understood the art of drawing out children by means of questions.’

Germany, its schools and similar institutions, its literature and language, even its handwriting, had a great attraction for Miss Beale. She had a few German lessons at the Paris school and afterwards worked at it alone, finally perfecting herself in the language by two long visits to the country, when she stayed principally at Brunswick and Dresden. On one occasion she resided for some time in a German family. In after years she would talk of this time to the girls at Cheltenham, telling them how she would make a point of conversing with the person she understood least easily at any gathering, inquiring the meaning of any word she did not know, to make use of it herself at the first opportunity. ‘And of course I did not mind being laughed at a little,’ she would add with a smile. Hence the praise that German ladies teaching at Cheltenham would accord her knowledge of the language, saying that she never made a mistake either in speaking or writing. She frequently made use of the German character in writing her diary.

The book on Kaiserwerth, written as it was for a special cause, has naturally long since had its day, though on its appearance it was accepted widely enough to justify the thought of a second edition. Mrs. Lancaster was greatly interested by it, and showed it to the Bishop of London,[22] who had just signed the Rule of the newly-founded Sisterhood. Both Bishop Jackson and Dean Trench declined, in friendly letters, dedications to themselves of a second edition, and none appears to have been issued; possibly on account of difficulties suggested by Mrs. Lancaster, who wished the scope of the book enlarged to embrace work of a similar nature in England. In the event of this being done, she begged Miss Beale to add a notice of the infant Community of St. Peter’s, then in Broughton Square. To-day the book can scarcely be called extant, but there is certainly one copy in England and one in Kaiserwerth. It is interesting because it shows, like other writing of this time, the continuity of Miss Beale’s ideas and thoughts. Her sowing had been betimes and abundant, and she could already gather as she needed. She did not give till she had the wherewithal, and though in her long years she frequently sowed afresh—was ever disciple as well as teacher—she was an early husbandman, a wise householder, able continuously and opportunely to bring out things new and old. The simile of Jairus’s daughter, occurring for the first time in the passage quoted below, was one she often quoted in connection with that awakening of women’s energies it had been her lot to share; and one she finally enshrined for her children in the window placed in the College to the memory of Miss Buckoll in 1890. And like much of her later work, the little book shows also how much her religion went hand in hand with all her work for others. There was no thought of the emancipation of women, no word of rights; she spoke only of duties, of scope to do good; but even these were quite secondary to the desire, the will to make the effort, the ear to hear the bidding voice. Here is a passage to illustrate this:

‘It has occurred to me that a more detailed description than that given six years ago by Miss Nightingale of an institution in which she was herself trained, and which has since that time many new features, might assist those who are considering the best way of turning to account the wasted energy of our country-women, of those whose highest happiness it would be to be like Mary, Joanna, and Susannah, to follow Christ.... There are many who, when they pray to God “to comfort and succour all them who ... are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity,” cannot be satisfied without giving a small portion of their money, who tremble at the thought of being numbered with the women who are at ease, with the careless daughters. O that Christ would take us by the hand. He has but to speak the word: “Daughter, I say unto thee, Arise”; and we shall arise and minister to Him: then will the scorners acknowledge we were only sleeping, and our souls will magnify the Lord.’[23]

Two other short extracts must be permitted:

‘I could not but contrast the aimless existence of many of my own country-women, the dreary regions of the fashionable world, with the wide field under cultivation by this band of Sisters, who, by God’s blessing, penetrate year by year farther into the wilderness, and rescue so many of their fellow-creatures from evils more to be dreaded than famine, pestilence, and the sword.’[24]

Finally, the following passage tells how the strengthening thought of the Communion of Saints, of which she spoke to Miss Gore on the last Sunday of her life, was already beginning to be hers:

‘The happiness of a Deaconess does not arise from external circumstances; it is a peace which the world cannot give. She must be prepared to live away from the world, without any society but that of a few sick persons and children, without beautiful services; to believe, in the midst of unbelief and sin, in the Holy Catholic Church and the Communion of Saints. She must always be watching for her Lord’s coming, for in the midst of the pestilence and near the field of battle is her post.’[25]

A second visit to Kaiserwerth, ten years later, gave Miss Beale great pleasure. She was delighted with the work being done and the extension of the small beginnings she had seen in 1856. In 1905, at Oeynhausen, she met accidentally a Deaconess of Kaiserwerth, was much attracted by her, and invited her to come and see her and talk to her of the institution, and after her return to England exchanged letters with her.

The Textbook of History entailed a great deal of labour and study, which must have been a boon to its writer at a time of depression and uncertainty. Though the scheme of it was no doubt in her mind before she left Casterton, and the book was probably begun in the summer holidays of 1857, it was not till after Christmas that she was free to devote herself to it. Then she threw into the work every hour she could justly secure, striving at the same time not to neglect family claims. The conditions under which it was done were little short of heroic. In order to secure freedom from interruption both for herself and her books of reference, she chose for her study a large empty room, where she worked in the midst of open volumes spread round her on the floor. It was winter, but she was glad to avail herself of the difficulty of keeping up a daily fire at the top of the old City house, in order to give less attraction to any other members of the household to sit with her and take up time in conversation. The empty grate by which she wrote lends significance to an entry in the diary of March 1858: ‘Self-indulgence because of cold.’ The self-denial and concentration of the writer bore early fruit, for this book, a digest of world-wide histories, was published in August 1858, just after its author had come to Cheltenham. The production of this textbook is an instance of the way in which Miss Beale would see and seize an opportunity. There was a real need for such a work. In her introduction she alludes to objections which could be raised to similar books then in use, and which were stated in articles which appeared in the Times of January 1857.

Miss Beale’s reference is doubtless to two letters headed ‘The Corruption of Popular School Books.’ The first of these, by the noted Dr. Cumming, appeared on January 17, and dealt with certain changes which had been made, in a Romish direction, in a widely used textbook of English history by Henry Ince. A new edition had lately appeared, professing itself to be much extended and improved, in wide circulation, and sanctioned by her Majesty’s Committee of the Council of Education. This edition, pleaded the writer of the Times letter, contained statements which made it ‘unsuitable for use in Protestant schools.’ Those quoted, e.g. that ‘Queen Elizabeth was a mistress in the art of dissembling,’ do not seem very reprehensible, but enough savour of Papistry had been introduced into the book to cause the Committee above-mentioned and the Society of Arts to strike the book off their lists. Dorothea Beale was quick to see and seize the opportunity thus afforded for a new textbook.

The very large scope of the work, embracing as it does the whole history of the world since the beginning of the Christian era, with the history of England given in rather fuller detail than the rest, makes it imperative that its hundred and seventy closely printed pages should be rather dry. The Textbook is intended for the teacher rather than the pupil; highly useful in its arrangement of facts, and names, and suggestions of ideas, but not in itself a complete lesson-book. Its clearness and fulness are not more characteristic of the writer than the dramatic instinct which led her to give such names, titles, and short quotations as tend at once to fix a fact in the memory, and to conjure up visions of the conditions under which such and such events took place. Miss Beale had a remarkable quickness in seizing on the important matter and stating it in a few telling words. It is interesting to take at haphazard her history of any century, and mark what a wealth of interest rather than of information is brought together in a few short pages to stimulate the reader’s thirst for knowledge. But it is sufficient to point out the titles chosen for the centuries, as showing what seemed to her of greatest importance to the progress of mankind.[26]

The book is completed with an account of the English Constitution and some genealogical tables. It reached a seventh edition, but Miss Beale was disinclined to bring it up to quite modern times, doubtless because she felt there are now other books to cover the ground as well or better than her own. Consequently the nineteenth century is left uncompleted. The book, however, played a useful part at a time when the teaching of history was very imperfect, and was well received by those who knew its author. ‘The plan of the book,’ wrote Mr. Plumptre, ‘seems to me very good, and I cannot doubt that you have carried into the details the same painstaking accuracy with which we used to be familiar in your work with us.’

Mr. Mackenzie, at the writer’s request, made an elaborate criticism, from which it is enough to quote his ‘chief complaint’: ‘Your unfairness to your own sex, and your willingness to believe and repeat the calumnies uttered against them by male writers, a fault to which the old monks were especially prone; but they were not quite silent, as you are, upon the virtues of the royal and noble Anglo-Saxon ladies, who did so much, even in the darkest ages, towards educating and refining the barbarous people by whom they were surrounded.’

Mr. Beale mentioned it more than once in his letters to the daughter in whose talent he had such pride: ‘The success of your little book is very encouraging. E. says they call it “Beale’s Ince.” ... I dined at the Adams’ last week, a doctor’s party. Dr. Daldy was loud in praise of the Textbook.’ And again, ‘Underneath D. Beale in my own copy I have written “sed summa sequar festigia rerum.”’ And to the end it was a source of satisfaction to the writer herself. ‘You could not have done so well without my Textbook, could you?’ she said to an old pupil whose Histories for Schools have been widely accepted.

The third work of this period was a little book entitled Self-Examination. This was chiefly designed for schools, and was edited by Mr. Denton, the vicar of St. Bartholomew’s, Moor Lane. This book, too, written when books of devotion were far less common than they are now, and in order to supply a real need of schoolgirls, has been long superseded by others, but in many cases the works for which it has been put on one side are less thoughtful and penetrating. The questions and meditations are arranged round the subjects of ‘My Duty towards God, and my Duty towards my Neighbour,’ and with the comment of verses from the Bible are presented in that tabular form which Miss Beale loved.[27] The actual questions for self-examination are throughout slight and few in proportion to what is suggested by the Scripture texts and the meditations; the reason doubtless being to make the reader think for herself.

This little work brings us face to face with that religion which all her life long was the motive power of Dorothea’s life. Deep religious feeling was no phase nor change of thought which came to her with years or experience. It was not wrought for her in the furnace of sorrow, though many times there renewed and purified. It was so much the dominating force of her mind and life, that, by which every day as every year she was controlled and inspired, that it may be reverently regarded as a special gift to one called to a great service. ‘I cannot,’ she wrote, ‘look back upon the time when God was not a present Friend. I would throw myself on my knees in trouble, and He gave of His compassion. How (as a child) I used to follow the service and wish it were possible to think of what God was;—to think of Him as mere Light was the nearest approach.’ And as an old woman—despite the love of friends, and her well-deserved honours, often alone and sick and weary—she wrote, ‘The Lord is my Light.’ But the religion of Dorothea Beale was far indeed from being a mere succession of beautiful and comforting thoughts. It meant authority. It involved all the difficulties of daily obedience, it meant the fatigue of watching, the pains of battle, sometimes the humiliation of defeat. Intense as was her feeling on religious subjects, it was never permitted to go off in steam, as she would term it, but became at once a practical matter for everyday life. Sorrow and regret for sin and mistakes passed into fresh effort against them; the perception of a beautiful thought or idea became a new motive for definite acts of charity and diligence. With regard to such a religious life as hers, the mind dwelling habitually in a region which is beyond controversy, it seems like a descent to a lower plane to speak of religious opinions. Yet no approximately true history of her can be related without reference to these. Even if there were no record of it as there is, it is obvious that one at once so large-minded and clear-headed, whose life displayed so much organisation and arrangement, must have definitely faced the great problems of eternity, must have listened to every appeal of Christianity, and with her own eyes have looked up each avenue of thought which promised an approach to Truth. And this she undoubtedly did. But in the knowledge of Divine things, as in that which she would scarcely permit to be called secular, her faithfulness and simple obedience to early teaching directed her mind to certain religious duties and opinions from which she never parted: ‘If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine,’ is a text she was fond of quoting to her Scripture classes. She lived to realise it. Very early and continuously she ruled her life by the commandments of the Lord, and when storms arose, when winds and floods of doubt threatened ruin, when she was herself ready to cry, ‘All is gone,’ the foundations of the house of faith were yet secure, and thereon love rebuilt.

And so it may be truly said that the framework of her personal religion was in age what it had been in youth. She had her own distinctly outlined path to which she had been guided early by such friends as her father and Mr. Mackenzie. This has been sometimes lost sight of, possibly owing to her deep sympathy and interest in matters of doubt and difficulty. When any of her children turned to her in distress of this nature, she felt, more than at any other time, the yearning of a mother’s heart, and was fearful of saying any word or even of showing any opinion of her own which might alarm or seal up confidence. Hence people of widely different views wished to claim her as of their own way of thinking when often she was not. She did not think it of paramount importance when speaking to the unorthodox, or even to the agnostic, to state her own beliefs precisely. She did not seek to proselytise but to help, to remove, as far as power was given her, all hindrances to the light, to persuade those who were in darkness still to obey. But she knew that she could not make any see; she recognised faith as the gift of God.

Miles Beale was a Churchman of the type known best by its nickname ‘High and Dry.’ His daughters were still quite young when they found this was a school to which not all the world belonged, and they began to appreciate religious differences. They heard, between St. Helen’s and St. Bartholomew’s, preachers of varying shades of thought. Mr. Mackenzie was succeeded at St. Helen’s by an incumbent of evangelical views. Some of Mr. Denton’s curates at St. Bartholomew’s went over to Rome; one became Father Ignatius.

Dorothea was only sixteen when her father wrote to her on the subject of the Hampden-Gorham dispute, as of a matter she well understood and found interesting. And this recalls the fact that religious controversy of that day raged specially round the question of Baptismal Regeneration. A letter written to the Council of the Ladies’ College after her appointment[28] shows how clearly and concisely, and without reference to books, Miss Beale could state her opinions. It deals with her views of the Sacraments, marking her religious position at the time and indeed to the end;—it was for her Prayer-book that she asked in the one clear moment of the last unconsciousness. This letter contains a bare, unemotional statement of belief, to which may well be added this: that while she held firmly the doctrine of ‘Two only, as generally necessary to salvation,’ the life of grace through the Sacraments was the power by which she lived. She recognised herself as fortunate in her special heritage of Christian thought, writing of it thus:—