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:—

‘It was a time of great religious revival: the bald services of my childhood were beginning to develop into the musical services of our own time.... The beautiful music of to-day is not more dear to me than those plain services with often grotesque accompaniments where I learned to see Heaven opened. Miss Sewell’s writings, especially The Experience of Life, helped me in early youth to work out the problems of my daily life. Religion quickened the intellectual life, for Sacramental teaching was to the leaders of that movement no narrow dogmatism, but the discovery of the river of the water of life flowing through the whole desert of human existence, and making it rejoice and blossom as the rose, revealing a unity in creation, a continuity in history, a glory in art, a purpose in life, making life infinitely worth living.’[29]

When quite young she began the practice of Sunday Communion, and many a week day found her at the 6 A.M. celebration at St. Bartholomew’s Church. From first to last her scanty diary records this service among the leading facts of ordinary life.

In the power thus gained she had ever before her the thought of co-operation, of working out salvation, of putting on Christ by daily dying to self by minute watchfulness, and in every sense of the word painstaking diligence. At a time when the pulpits of Cheltenham were ringing with statements which seemed to her to misrepresent the great doctrine of the Atonement, she was speaking to her children of the true nature of the Redeemer’s Blood, of the living stream flowing from the Heart through all the members; she was seeking for herself and for them the righteousness of Christ, not as a mere substitution, but as a real attainment won by the union of a soul wholly surrendered to the workings of the grace of God.

This chapter may fitly close with a passage from the diary, which she appears to have begun to keep for the first time this year, when she was to some extent forced back upon herself, when she was making her own scheme of daily work. Begun on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1858, it was continued intermittently at least to 1901, when the increasing infirmities of age made all reading and writing difficult. Sometimes dropped for many months, it was taken up again as if with the suggestion of a sense of culpability for neglect. It was never full; never, so far as outward events are concerned, of any great interest. Some of these, indeed, as the writing of certain letters, the visits of certain friends, or business engagements, are just mentioned and no more; doubtless for the sake of reference only. It remains for us as a revelation of the keen self-scrutiny with which she, who had to guide and warn others, was daily searching her own soul. Very often for weeks there is no mention of anything done, or seen, or thought as far as the matters of this world are concerned; but she never failed to note what she regarded as the real life, spiritual growth or the reverse, right or wrong conduct, faithful or unfaithful performance of religious duties. This diary cannot be ignored if a true presentment of Dorothea Beale is to be given. Hence, intimate as it is, enough extracts as may display the persistent effort of her life are inserted here. They are not consecutive, but chosen as characteristic and interesting, and showing to some extent the occupations of the period. Scanty traces indeed of what she was doing and thinking, they are yet enough to show a little of the anxiety and conflict of which she wrote in 1901 to Miss Margaret Richardson, in these words: ‘Once I had an interval of work, and I thought perhaps God would not give it me again—but after that interval He called me here. I think now I can see better how I needed that time of comparative quiet and solitude, and a time to think over my failures, and a time to be more helpful to my family.’

Extracts from Diary of 1858

‘February 17th.—Ash Wednesday. [To] S. M’s. [Applied] for school at Holloway. Lip-service. Snappish. Resolution. [to strive for more] humility, patience, charity.

‘February 26th.—Miss Alston came. Idle [meditation] on peace. To be less anxious.

‘February 27th.—History for seven hours. Church. Some idleness.

‘March 5th.—Went to see Mr. Sankey about boy’s evening school. To church. History. Many impatient answers to Mama.

‘March 6th.—History. Aunt E. came. Cross at not getting my own way. Some idleness. Impatient manner.

‘March 7th, Sunday.—Went to H. E. without prayer. Not a devoted service. Morning prayer nothing but vain thoughts. At evening Church. Very cross.

‘April 14th.—History. Elizabeth. Called on Mrs. Blenkarne. Dined at Chapter House. Idle. Indulgence in reading story at my time for evening prayer. Unpunctual in morning. Thoughtless about Mama.

‘April 20th.—History, 16th Century. Felt terribly cross. O grant me calmness.

‘April 22nd.—Went about servants till 11.30. Wrote to Miss Hyde. Still some tempest within.

‘June 2nd.—Copying. Dinner party. Eliza at home. Worldly.

‘June 3rd.—Headache. To Mrs. Northcote’s. [Wrote] preface.

‘June 4th.—Saw Mrs. Barrett. Copied. Neglected prayer greatly. Very worldly.

‘June 7th.—Wrote letters. A terrible blank of worldliness. Idle.

‘June 9th.—Wrote to Miss Elwall. Letter from Cheltenham. M. copied certificates. Worldly. Spoke angrily to A.

‘June 10th.—Wrote to Cheltenham. Saxon Exhibition. Selfish and worldly.

‘June 13th.—S. Bartholomew’s twice. H. E. Inattentive twice. Unkind thoughts and words.

‘June 14th.—Letter to go to Cheltenham.

‘June 16th.—Elected.’

CHAPTER V
CHELTENHAM

‘He builded better than he knew.’—Emerson.

Dorothea Beale in age remembered that in youth she had planned ‘an air-castle school, with a central quadrangle, cloisters and rooms over.’

To few is it given, as it was given to her, to realise so nearly the dreams of youth, for few possess the sense of purpose and the indomitable will which fell to her portion. But the college of her vision did not come into being without a process of development so slow that for some years progress could hardly be recorded, nor without infinite disappointment even in matters which seemed at the time vital; not without ceaseless effort, seen and unseen, on the part of the Lady Principal.

We have reached, in the twentieth century, a period in the history of education in which schools may be said to be founded ready-made. A great and fine ‘plant,’ opening ceremonies, royal patronage, appear necessities from the beginning. The Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, was twenty years old before it had a building of its own, its first stone was laid by an unknown hand, its opening rite consisted of school prayers in the ordinary way on a Monday morning, at 9 A.M., with the addition of a few words rather nervously read by the Lady Principal. The college has never had a patron, nor did it even have any specially distinguished visitor, till the Empress Frederick came in 1897.

The Ladies’ College did not originate with Miss Beale. She brought to it, when it was but a weakling and like to perish, all her dreams and all her energies. She made it emphatically her own; but its first inception was with a small number of Cheltenham residents, notably with the Reverend H. Walford Bellairs, then H.M. Inspector of Schools for Gloucestershire,[30] and the Reverend C. A. Bromby,[31] Principal of the Training Colleges. Its foundation was a continuation of work already begun in the town with the opening of Cheltenham College, in 1843. This was one of the earliest of the great nineteenth century public schools, and one of the very few which has no ancient origin. A very slight glance at the history of the town, which has produced two great colleges, will serve to show that their work in its midst has been almost that of a quiet and beneficent revolution.

The mild air and fertile soil of the great plain below the Cotswold Hills were recognised as early as the days of Edward the Confessor, when Cheltenham was called upon to furnish a large amount of bread for the royal kennels. For centuries only a little market town with a beautiful Early Gothic church on the banks of an insignificant stream, it crept out of obscurity in the pages of Ogilby who, in 1785, described it as inhabited by people ‘much given to plant tobacco, though they are suppressed by authority.’

Forty years after this the discovery of the medicinal properties of its waters made the place attractive to those who could afford to take the remedy, and in the later years of George the Third, it came to be the ‘Queen of watering places.’ Details of the long royal visit of 1788 may be read in the pages of Fanny Burney and others. The King would afterwards speak of Cheltenham and the Vale of Gloucester as ‘the finest part of my kingdom that I have beheld.’ Other distinguished visitors followed: the Prince Regent, who gave a ball; Charles James Fox; Wellington, within a year of Waterloo; Louis Philippe and Marie Amélie in their exile; and many others, among whom, as a boy, came Byron, to wander, according to a continental biographer, ‘on the seashore at Cheltenham!’

As late as 1870 there was in Cheltenham scarcely a house which did not testify by its grandiose, pseudo-classic[32] architecture to the past magnificence of a town which had striven to be worthy of a court. Even to-day there are but few which do not follow the lines laid down by the builders of the early years of the nineteenth century, a time at which the town grew with mushroom speed. It was a period when population was rapidly increasing all over the country; but in few places were the leaps and bounds so marked as in Cheltenham, where in 1840, a census return was tenfold larger than it had been in 1804.

This rapid growth was due, less to the famous wells and pump-rooms than to the reputation of its climate, and the absence of any great winter severity, attractive to those who had lived in tropical countries. Hence Cheltenham became a favourite residence for Anglo-Indians, military and civil. The town grew perhaps a little less distinguished, but not less gay and popular. The fashion in Cheltenham waters passed; kings and dukes sought their ‘cure’ abroad; but it was possible to have balls and other amusements without a Prince Regent, while the hunting season especially became a time of festivity. And side by side with the lovers of pleasure, who formed so large and sparkling a part of Cheltenham society, existed those who took all life with deep, almost forbidding seriousness.

To meet the needs of the rapidly growing population during the first forty years of the nineteenth century, several churches were built under the auspices of different persons. Church-building in the days of proprietary sittings was a not unprofitable investment; there were also liberal benefactors to support Mr. Close, who was incumbent of Cheltenham for nearly thirty years, in his schemes for the welfare of his flock.

Francis Close, a disciple of Charles Simeon, came to Cheltenham in 1824, as curate-in-charge of Holy Trinity, a newly erected chapel-of-ease to the parish church. The living of Cheltenham was already at that time in the hands of Simeon, who had purchased it from its various patrons, and presented it to the Reverend C. Jervis. On the death of Mr. Jervis, Simeon appointed young Close to this important charge. From the first Mr. Close was a very popular preacher. ‘It was,’ says an admirer, ‘a new and interesting sight to see so singularly handsome a young man filled with such religious zeal.’ A man of pronounced and narrow views, immense activity and determination, combined with geniality and cheerfulness, he sought to regulate the ways of society, and to some extent succeeded. He ruled the town from the pulpit of the parish church as from a throne, and earned, among those who loved him least, the name of the ‘Pope of Cheltenham.’[33] He preached against racing, acting, dancing. But if, as has been said, he established dinner-parties and destroyed the theatre, he acted only with others of his school of thought. Those were the days of eating and drinking, since some form of recreation was necessary, and, moreover, abstinence had a suspiciously Roman look. They were days when all forms of art, not that of the theatre alone, were regarded with distrust. It is true that Mr. Close gave a lecture on ‘Literature and the Fine Arts considered as Legitimate Pursuits of a Religious Man’; he also preached a sermon entitled ‘The Restoration of Churches is the Restoration of Popery,’ and he said to the head-mistress of a fashionable boarding-school where dancing was included in the curriculum: ‘When Mrs. Close wished my daughters taught dancing, I reminded her of her marriage vow.’

Mr. Close’s energies took visible and permanent shape in the buildings which arose during his long incumbency. Eight churches grew up around the parish church, but that, alas! was not their model. Most of the new ones displayed all the worst features of a debased style of church architecture: a diminutive chancel, three-decker arrangements for parson and clerk, high pews, with safe doors for the congregation.

National schools were built, and training colleges founded, also under the direction of Mr. Close, and he took his share in the institution of the Proprietary College for Boys, in 1843.

With the new churches came new clergy, among whom, the most popular name at the time, was that of Archibald Boyd, vicar of Christchurch, a very eloquent preacher who brought the little schoolroom in the hamlet of Alstone, where he lectured on Sunday evenings, into rivalry with the parish church. To-day, he is famous for having had as his curate, for five years, the young Frederick Robertson, whose afternoon sermons at Christchurch, in spite of the suspicion of unorthodoxy which early began to attach itself to his name, drew many thoughtful hearers, such as the Principal of Cheltenham College.

The most leading mind at the time among the younger clergy was that of Charles Henry Bromby, who became vicar of St. Paul’s in 1843. He was a man of large mental gifts, and had special perception of the intellectual needs of his day. The Working Men’s Club, which he established in his parish, was among the very first in the country. All the great educational institutions of Cheltenham are indebted to his outlook and zeal. Joint-founder of Cheltenham College, and later, though he took no public part and earned no name in the matter, of that for ‘Young Ladies and Children,’ his most active interest and work was for the teaching of the poor. He became first Principal of the Training Colleges[34] for headmasters and mistresses of national schools, starting the work on wise and secure lines, and rapidly bringing it to the front among that of kindred institutions.

Mr. Bellairs was actively as well as zealously associated with Mr. Bromby in all the great schemes, by which Cheltenham, rich and poor, was to be enlightened, and in the case of the Proprietary College for Ladies, it is his name which comes to the front, and it was in his house that the first meeting to draw up its constitution was held.

There was every reason to hope that a high-class day-school for girls, then almost unknown, might succeed in Cheltenham, where parents had had a successful experience of such a school for their boys. Everywhere, people, who cared about a good education for girls, found it difficult to obtain even at great cost. Many liked to keep their children with them; those who were indifferent would be glad to avail themselves of the cheaper method of the day-school, provided it could be run on exclusive lines. There had been for some years in the town, select boarding schools, where a few day-scholars were received. The advantage over these of a large public school, necessarily of a more permanent character than a small private institution could be, was obvious.

At the meeting in the house of Mr. Bellairs, on September 30, 1853, a date which Miss Beale has noted as the birthday of the Ladies’ College, there were present but three others. These were the Reverend W. Dobson, Principal of Cheltenham College, the Reverend H. A. Holden, Vice-Principal, and Dr. S. E. Comyn. One other gentleman should be named among these early builders, namely, Mr. Nathaniel Hartland. Colonel Fitzmaurice was also a member of the first council.

The founders of this college and day-school for girls were anxious to make it clear that their aim was to develop in the pupils character and fitness for the duties of later life. Hence the first report states that it was intended ‘to afford, on reasonable terms, an education based upon religious principles which, preserving the modesty and gentleness of the female character, should so far cultivate adopted its rules with regard to religious instruction, and the social rank of the pupils.

The draft of the resolutions, made at the first meeting, may still be read. Hardly less remarkable than the development of later days is the permanent nature of the impress given to the College at its first start. Some of the resolutions were:—

‘That an Institution for the daughters and young children of Noblemen and Gentlemen be established in Cheltenham, and be entitled the Cheltenham College for the education of young Ladies and Children.

‘The College to be established by means of one hundred shares of £10 each; the possessor of each share to have the power of nominating a Pupil, and a vote at annual and special meetings.

...

‘That the management of the College for the ensuing year shall be vested in the Founders, viz.... who for this purpose shall be constituted the Committee of Management after the expiration of the first year, exclusive of the Treasurer and Honorary Secretary, who will be ex officio members of the Board, they being shareholders and members of the Church of England....

‘That the College be under the direction of a Principal, a Lady from whom the pupils will receive religious instruction at appointed times in accordance with the doctrine and the teaching of the Church of England....

‘That at the end of each year the pupils be examined by competent persons appointed by the Committee.

‘That the College shall consist of two departments, the Junior for children of both sexes, admissible after five years of age, the boys to be removed when they have attained their eighth year.

‘The appointment of the Lady Principal and all subordinate teachers and officers to be vested in the Committee.’

With few alterations these resolutions passed into the prospectus issued to the public in November 1853, an exact copy of which will be found in the appendix.[35] Experimental prospectuses, which never left the hands of the Committee, exist to show how the founders formed and modified their views for the College. It was proposed at one time to have a noble patron and a visitor, besides the working Committee; but as Miss Beale somewhat whimsically relates, this was found to be impracticable. ‘It was thought that it would add to the prestige of the College, and diminish the prejudice which then existed, to have a distinguished patron, and so Lord de Saumerez, then resident in Cheltenham, was applied to, but in vain. So there was no Patron.’[36] There was also no visitor until 1875, when Dr. Ellicott, then Bishop of Gloucester, kindly undertook the charge. The difficulty of securing patronage was probably what caused the Council, in virtue of one of their own rules, to invite Mr. Close to accept the office of President, with a seat at the Board. At the same time Mr. Bellairs was appointed Vice-President.

In the first instance it was intended that the College should be confined to day-scholars; then, in case this restriction should limit the scope of the work and perhaps injure it financially, a sort of half-measure was planned, and it was proposed to state that: ‘the Committee will not interfere with any arrangements made by the Parents and Friends of pupils for Boarding their Children, provided the numbers in any given Boarding-House do not exceed six. Should Boarding-Houses ever be opened offering accommodation to a greater number of pupils than six, the Committee reserve to themselves the power of insisting upon and conferring a License, before Children in such Boarding-Houses be allowed the privilege of becoming Students in the College.’

As early as the 1st of November three ladies had been found to undertake boarding-houses, and they were not restricted as to numbers. The low terms of the boarding-houses (£40 a year including all expenses, of course without the tuition fees) suggest that the ideas of the liberal-minded Committee may have forestalled those of the future Lady Principal, ever eager to help on those who deserved but could not afford education. The tuition fees were on the same low scale; from six guineas to twenty guineas, and including pianoforte lessons, class singing, elementary drawing and needlework, besides English subjects and French.

Shares had been taken up to the number of one hundred and fifty-seven, so the Council had enough money at their disposal to justify the necessary initial outlay. After an unsuccessful effort to obtain Lake House, which its owner declined to let for the purposes of a school, Cambray House, a fine old Georgian building with a beautiful garden, was taken at a rent of £200 a year. Some hundreds of pounds were spent in making this house suitable for its purpose, arranging a schoolroom (40 by 30 feet), a system of heating, and so on, while a part of it was set aside as a residence for the Lady Principal. The Committee appointed in this capacity Mrs. Procter, widow of Colonel Procter, ‘a highly educated officer,’ but her daughter Annie Procter, who was called Vice-Principal, was the actual head of the College. ‘The former,’ ran the first report, ‘is possessed of that age and experience which are necessary for the training of the young; the latter of that youth and vigour which are necessary for teaching.’ A younger sister had the post of assistant secretary, and several regular teachers and professors were also appointed.

Cambray House.
From an old engraving.

The College was actually opened on February 13, 1854, the pupils, eighty-two in number, having been examined a week before that date. Thus the inauguration ceremony was the actual beginning of work. When writing her Jubilee history of the College, Miss Beale collected reminiscences from some who were present on the opening day. Nothing more impressive was forthcoming than a scrimmage of dogs in the cloak-room, the calling over of names, followed by immediate sorting into classes already arranged as a result of the examination, and that ‘various old gentlemen promenaded about the first few days, and held conclaves in a Board-Room on the right hand of the front door.’ The age of the pupils varied considerably from that of tiny mites to that of grown-up girls. They were arranged in different departments, the lowest being a kind of infant school on raised benches.

At first the numbers increased rapidly, and by the end of the year there were one hundred and twenty pupils. But the fees were too low, and the Committee soon had cause for anxiety over expenses. In the first year, 1854, more than £1300 was expended in regular salaries and in payments to visiting teachers; the accounts in December showed a deficit of £400. Matters improved but slowly in 1855, and in order to lessen expenses, various changes were suggested, such as the substitution of German, which the Vice-Principal could teach, for Latin, and an arrangement by which the pianoforte should be taught on a class system. In the general meeting of that year, it was resolved no longer to admit boys to the College, and with them disappeared the whole of the infant department, not to reappear till the Kindergarten was opened in 1882.

This change led to a slight diminution of numbers, and the report of the year 1856 (published in and dated February 1857), while it embodied many words of praise from the examiners and showed a balance of receipts above expenditure in the current expenses, yet breathed a consciousness of many difficulties and obstacles to be overcome. It was acknowledged that had it been desirable to purchase furniture for the Lady Principal instead of paying her £25 a year for the use of her own, it could not have been done from the funds in hand. ‘In conclusion,’ said the Chairman, ‘your Council beg to express their thanks to those parents who, during the past year, have continued to place confidence in the College and its system. On their own part and on that of the Lady Principal and the Vice-Principal, they desire to assure the public that no efforts shall be wanting on their part to amend what may appear, on mature consideration, to be defective.... They cannot depart from their fundamental principle, which, as they stated, is soundness rather than show; magna est veritas et prævalebit.’

Next year, 1857, the numbers crept down, first to ninety-three, then to eighty-nine, and the capital account, which had never gone up, was little above £400. Shares which should have been £10, were offered for half that sum. The want of success was partly due to want of harmony between Miss Procter and the Council on points of educational method. In May 1858, when the numbers were again reduced, and the prospect of improvement very small, the Procters resigned; also the ladies who took boarders one by one gave up. So poor was the outlook for the College at this time that the Council might have felt justified in abandoning the whole scheme. Fortunately, however, those who possessed the foresight and courage, which could still carry it on, were supported by the circumstance that the lease of Cambray House had a couple more years to run. So it came to pass that in May 1858, within a fortnight of Miss Procter’s resignation, the Council advertised for a Lady Principal thus:—

Cheltenham Ladies’ College

‘A Vacancy having occurred in the Office of Lady Principal, Candidates for the Appointment are requested to apply by letter (with references) before the 1st of June, to J. P. Bell, Esq., Hon. Sec., Cheltenham.

‘A well-educated and experienced Lady (between the ages of 35 and 45) is desired, capable of conducting an Institution with not less than 100 day-pupils.

‘A competent knowledge of German and French, and a good acquaintance with general English Literature, Arithmetic, and the common branches of female education, are expected.

‘Salary, upwards of £200 a year, with furnished apartments, and other advantages.

‘No Testimonials to be sent until applied for, and no answers will be returned except to Candidates apparently eligible.’

The shareholders requested a general meeting in order to receive an explanation of the cause which led to the resignation of Miss Procter, and this was convened for June 2. The Committee was occupied during the fortnight which succeeded this in selecting and interviewing some of the fifty candidates for the Headship, and Miss Beale was elected on June 13. In July Miss Procter took her final leave in the following letter to Mr. Hartland:—

Glendale House, July 28, 1858.

‘My dear Sir,—I thank you much for your kind letter enclosing your cheque for £41, 10s. 6d.

‘I take this opportunity of sending you the keys of the College. The house has been cleaned throughout. The Chimneys have all been swept.

‘Some few stores,—nearly a ¼ cwt. of soap, some dip candles, and two new scrubbing brushes,—are in a closet in the pantry.

‘The new zinc ventilator is in the press used for the drawing materials.

‘Two cast-iron fenders, of mine, have been removed from two of the class-rooms.—I remain, my dear Sir, yours very sincerely,

S. Anne Procter.’

Miss Beale heard of a vacancy on the staff of the Ladies’ College in January 1858, when a Queen’s College friend, Miss Mulcaster, wrote her a letter interesting for the glimpses it gives both of Casterton and Cheltenham.

‘I am anxious,’ the letter ran, ‘that you should as soon as possible receive this letter, which is the very earliest reply in my power to make to yours.... I cannot feel very sorry on your own account for your leaving Casterton, although I do so at the manner of it.... I am very glad that you feel the discipline and teaching have been useful to you. I do not know that anything better could be desired for you than a return to Queen’s, but I have something, or rather a shadow of something I wish you to know in case you are disappointed there. I believe a place in the Ladies’ College at Cheltenham is vacant, and if so it might suit you. Miss Procter the Superintendent and many of the Committee are considered High Church. Miss Brewer, I am sure, would be very much pleased to hear from you, and I think would be disposed to facilitate your appointment, if there is still a vacancy. She, being one of the teachers, could answer any inquiries better than I. There is no home provided for the teachers by the Committee, but they have hitherto made private arrangements to live together.

‘Cheltenham, to my mind, presents unusual advantages as a place of residence; combining those of town and country, and last but not least those to be derived from Canon Boyd’s ministry and dear Mr. Bromby’s. I could give you some introductions, but it is too soon to talk of those things yet....’

Miss Beale must have answered this, and probably wrote at the same time to Miss Brewer, whom she had known at Queen’s; but there are no further letters existing on the subject. But she herself told in later life that she declined to apply for the post as she had resolved to seek a Headship. There is no mention of Cheltenham in the diary until May, but it appears that other schools were either applied for or considered. On February 17 we have ‘For school at Holloway.’ On February 18, ‘A letter from a Greenwich school.’ This was perhaps visited on the 22nd, when the diary mentions a journey to Greenwich; but it is not named again. On March 2 we find ‘Mamma wrote to Mrs. Birch about school at Reigate.’ On March 24, ‘Talked to Mr. Hyde about College at Camberwell.’ This possibly appears again in the record of April 17: ‘Mary decides against Camberwell scheme.’

A letter mentioned in Miss Beale’s diary as received from Cheltenham on May 18 was doubtless in answer to her application, after the advertisement had appeared, to inform her that she was accepted as a candidate for the vacant Headship. The record of the next few weeks, brief as it is, bears marks of the zeal and activity with which everything possible was done to procure testimonials and the recommendations of friends; while, at the same time, the work went on at Barnes, and the sheets of the Textbook were passing through the press. The writer was obviously full of anxiety and hope, having perceived in Cheltenham a promising sphere of work; but she did not relax the daily spiritual combat to which we owe the existence of the diary.

On receipt of a favourable answer she went at once to see Mr. Plumptre, and wrote to Dr. Trench. After the Casterton experience it was necessary to have further recommendations than those which she had taken there from Queen’s College. Among the friends to whom she wrote was Mrs. Lancaster, who replied by return:—

‘Englemere, Whit. Tues., 1858.

‘I am very sorry that you did not tell me about Cheltenham before: I am one of the Proprietors! or Committee or something! and my brother is Vice-Principal—indeed he almost established it. I have now written to him telling him my thoughts as to the maturity of your mind and judgment, and I hope it may be successful. If you are not quite determined against Penitentiary work there is a very nice thing for a Lady Superintendent ... about which the Hon. and Rev. C. Harris ... would give you full particulars.... It is worked by a Committee, but the Lady Superintendent would be allowed to do as she liked....’

In the course of the next fortnight many more letters were received. Among them one from Miss Elwall of the Barnes School. She wrote:—

‘ ... You have succeeded in making subjects usually styled dry, positively attractive, whilst your plan has been successful in forming not merely superficial scholars even whilst producing results in a remarkably short period.

‘Your gentleness of manner, patience, and lady-like deportment are all that could be desired, and should you leave me I shall feel the greatest regret at the termination of an engagement which has been equally agreeable to myself and to my pupils.—I am, dear Miss Beale, with much esteem, yours most sincerely,

M. J. Elwall.’

One from Mrs. Curling, the wife of Dr. Curling, an eminent physician and her father’s friend, runs:—

‘39 Grosvenor Street, June 12, 1858.

‘ ... I shall be truly happy if any recommendation of mine can promote your success. I have had the pleasure of knowing you many years, and in your journeys with me abroad I have had frequent opportunities of witnessing your tact and common sense, as well as good temper, and believe you to possess in addition the power of management essential for such an appointment. I am sure that the College would be fortunate in obtaining your assistance.’

Some friends wrote direct to the Cheltenham Council. The testimony borne to Miss Beale’s high character is genuine and strong, if quaintly expressed according to present-day notions in some of these. Mr. Shepheard wrote:—

‘Silverdale, June 1858.

‘I have the greatest pleasure in expressing my high opinion of Miss Beale’s character and attainments generally. Though she holds opinions on the subject of sacramental grace entirely opposed to my own, it is no more than her due that I should say that her high sense of duty, and inflexible integrity of principle, and conscientious following of the path of duty without regard to consequences, have won my highest respect and esteem.

‘The circumstances under which she left the Clergy Daughters’ School in this place, were such, that I cannot speak of them in detail, out of unwillingness to reflect on the conduct of the authorities there, but I consider her dismissal by them to have been highly honourable to herself.

‘As a Teacher, I have reason to believe that she is very highly accomplished and has been very successful—though I say this from general impressions only.

H. Shepheard, M.A.

Incumbent of Casterton, late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and late Head Master of Cheam School, Surrey.’

and Miss Reynolds privately approached Mr. Bellairs:—

‘Trinity Terrace, Cheltenham.

‘A friend has asked me whether I can do anything to advance the interests of Miss Beale....

‘Miss Beale is not personally known to me, but from all I have heard she is a very conscientious and hard-working person, as well as one whose attainments are very high in most and I believe all of the departments necessary for the successful discharge of so important an office. Whether her talents for government correspond with her educational skill, and her very high religious and moral character, I know not; but I have been anxious to fulfil her wish in drawing your attention to her application, which she feared might be overlooked as one among many.

The most interesting of this series of letters is one from Miss Alston to Mrs. Lancaster. This, through Mr. Bellairs, undoubtedly helped to influence the Council, whose members were wise enough to seek for character as much as attainment in the new Head. Others had dwelt on Miss Beale’s talent and power and single-hearted devotion to her calling; Miss Alston could also speak of her life and value at home.

‘Donnington Rectory, June 12, 1858.

‘ ... I heard from Miss Beale this morning that the Cheltenham College had written for her testimonials. I hope she may obtain the appointment she desires, it seems one for which she is so well qualified. Of her power of teaching others, and making them delight in their studies, there is no doubt. But you do not know her as I do, in her home and daily life; there all look up to her and seek her counsel. Our friendship commenced when we were eighteen; since that time I have not only profited, I trust, by the instruction she has given me in the pursuit of various studies, but I have always consulted her on all my plans, where the welfare of others has been concerned, and have found her counsel full of common sense and kind consideration for the feelings of those we desired to help or instruct. She is good-tempered and has plenty of tact, but shows instantly her dislike to anything untrue in word or act. Forgive this long letter, but I thought you might have some influence, and I am much interested for my friend, and at the same time feel that I should rather place any one I loved under her than with any one else I have met. With kind regards,—Believe me yours very sincerely,

Eliza Ann Alston.’

On June 14 came a letter summoning Miss Beale to Cheltenham. Her diary does not tell us where she stayed, or give any particulars of the interviews she had with the Council as a body, or with individuals. It records her election on the 16th, and the fact that Mr. Bellairs came to breakfast on the 17th. On the same day she saw Mr. Hartland and Dr. Comyn. By the single word ‘dress,’ which concludes her meagre entries of what were such momentous events for her, hangs a little tale of personal need supplied by the kind thought of a sister who willingly lent a blue silk gown for the would-be Lady Principal to wear at her first interview with her Council. Absorption in the Textbook and kindred subjects had precluded care of the writer’s wardrobe, and when this important moment came, it was felt that neither the simple black nor the mouse-coloured grey was equal to the occasion. The conscientious care of the borrowed plumes is still remembered.

On June 18 she returned from Cheltenham, full of hope, to write innumerable letters—stamps, under their ancient name of ‘heads,’ became almost a daily entrance in the diary, which sometimes served as account-book;—to finish the lessons at Barnes, for the school year had not yet ended; and to correct the proofs of the Textbook, with the satisfaction of feeling that she had in it something that would help in the formation of her teachers-to-be. She received many congratulations. Some letters were kept; Mr. Shepheard’s is given, as it bears upon a subject which was about to cause fresh trouble.

‘Silverdale, June 24, 1858.

‘ ... I must tell you how pleased I am on your account personally, at your success—and the triumph of justice in your case over unfairness and tyranny. My pleasure would be indeed great, if I had any hope that you might be led to reconsider those opinions on sacramental grace which have formed the only subject of division in opinion between us. The longer I live the more I am convinced of their danger as containing in fact the germ of all popery; and subverting the very nature and essence of vital godliness, by substituting the form for the reality, the outward act for the inward spiritual power and operation.

‘I wish you would read Mr. Litton’s book, The Church of Christ, on that subject; it is unanswerable.

‘What is exactly the name and nature of your College?—Very sincerely yours with all kindest regards,

H. Shepheard.’

There were also through these weeks a good many interchanged visits on matters both of business and pleasure. The name of Miss Vincent occurs twice among others mentioned in the diary. This is the lady who in August of 1858 became Lady Superintendent at Casterton, and remained there till 1888, when she died there in harness at the age of seventy-five.

Dorothea Beale was not, however, destined to take possession of her kingdom without a conflict. The old religious dispute was handed on from Casterton, for Mr. Shepheard, with one other whose name does not appear, felt he could not but mention the points he held to be ‘dangerous’ in her religious beliefs. And there was certainly still another letter to discourage the Council, from M. Mariette to Mr. Penrice Bell, questioning Miss Beale’s suitability for the post of Head Mistress on the ground that she was not sympathetic in manner. This appears to have been disregarded, but the partisans of Dean Close felt bound to consider the accusation of High Church opinions. Miss Beale first learned of the opposition which had arisen to her appointment on July 12, in the following letter from Mr. Bell:—

‘July 10, 1858.

‘Dear Miss Beale,—Letters have been put into my hand to-day which cause me much anxiety, and before consulting the Council upon the subject, I think it best to communicate with you, begging an immediate reply in the same spirit of unreserve and candour and frankness as that in which I now write.

‘When here I took pains to impress upon your mind the fact that the Council could not in justice to those whom they represent accept a Lady Principal who holds High Church views or sympathises with them; and that they had rejected most satisfactory testimonials from one of the candidates solely on the ground of her professing doctrinal views of that character. I was thus explicit with you in order to prevent any misunderstanding upon this most important question, but nothing fell from your lips to lead me to suppose you were open to an objection of that nature. I forbore from motives of delicacy (and probably the other members of the Council did the same), to press this subject upon you in the shape of direct enquiry, feeling sure you would not conceal your real views if they were indeed such as I plainly stated to be opposed to those entertained by the founders of the institution. The letters are marked “Private,” so I am not at liberty to name the writers, but I will quote the material portions; and I may remark that both gentlemen speak in the highest terms of your qualifications in general.

‘“She, Miss Beale, is very High Church to say the least, and holds ultra views of Baptismal Regeneration.” ... “She has also a serious and deep religious feeling, and a self-denying character. But she is decidedly High Church. Her opinions on the vital and critical question of sacramental grace are altogether those of the High Church or Tractarian School—assuming the opus operatum of the Sacraments to convey, of necessity and in all cases, the inward grace of which that Sacrament is the sign.”

‘“It is right to add that Miss Beale avows her belief in the Bible as the rule of faith.”

‘Now you have undoubtedly full right to entertain such opinions as in your conscience you believe to be true, but at the same time you are (and were) bound in honour of good faith, on such occasion as the offering of yourself for the important position to which you have been recently appointed, to avow your opinions openly and distinctly; especially when made acquainted with the views of those responsible for your selection.

‘If it be the fact that you do hold opinions such as are attributed to you, it is clear that you will not only inflict serious injury on the Institution, but also on yourself, by assuming the office—for if you hold us to the appointment the Council would and must, I imagine, at once give you the three months’ notice (or salary equivalent), and cancel it at the earliest period, publishing their reasons for so extraordinary a step. If, however, you are misrepresented, I shall heartily rejoice on every account, but I beg of you, by return of post, to favour me with a definite reply to the two questions I feel it now my duty to put to you:—

‘1st. Do you or do you not hold the doctrine of the opus operatum in the Sacrament of Baptism?

‘2nd. Do you or not sympathise with and are attached to the principles of the High Church party?—Believe me to remain, yours very truly,

J. Penrice Bell, Hon. Sec.

‘PS.—I think it better not to print the Prospectus until the present difficulty is settled in some way.’

This letter, which must have come as a bolt from the blue, was a blow, but not of a crushing nature to one whose energies were ever braced by conflict. Miss Beale wrote at once to Mr. Bellairs to tell him what had happened, and to Mr. Bell in answer to his attack. Both letters are given, as they clearly state her religious position. To Mr. Bellairs she wrote:—

‘31 Finsbury Square, July 12.

‘ ... Although our acquaintance has been very short, owing to the kindness with which you received me, I cannot help considering you in some measure as a friend, and feeling that you will understand me: perhaps, also, your office both as Clergyman and Vice-President of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College gives me some right to trouble you upon this occasion.

‘I received this morning a note from Mr. Bell, accusing me of want of candour in not speaking of my religious views, although they were in no way alluded to by the Council, and telling me he has been informed that my opinions are those of the Tractarian School. Now, as I have never seen more than a few pages of the “Tracts,” I cannot positively contradict such a statement. I have explained somewhat at large to him what are my opinions; I will not repeat them to you, as you will no doubt see the letter. That my views differ considerably from those of the ultra-evangelical party, of which Mr. Carus Wilson is one of the leaders, and the Record the accredited organ, I freely acknowledge; but I think them those of a moderate member of the English Church, and on seeing your name as Vice-President, I concluded the Ladies’ College was not identified with any exclusive party. I have endeavoured to be perfectly candid, for I could not undertake so great a work without the hope of God’s blessing. Should my own letter not be considered decisive evidence against me, perhaps you would think it worth while to write to Mrs. Lancaster or Mrs. Greene (with whom I think you said you were acquainted). With both of them I have spoken freely on religious subjects, and they would tell you whether they believed my opinions to be extreme. As nothing is farther from my wishes than to deceive the Council, I forward to you by this post two books, which I have published without my name—not because I was ashamed of expressing what I thought right, but because one naturally shrinks from exposing without necessity one’s inner religious life. I feel this more especially with regard to the smaller book, which I must therefore ask you not to mention to others. I send them to you, because they may assist you in coming to a right conclusion, whether for or against my retaining the post to which I have been appointed, and I think the Council will be in a great measure guided by your decision.’

To Mr. Penrice Bell:—

‘31 Finsbury Square, July 12, 1858.

‘On looking at the Prospectus of the Casterton School, I saw on the Committee the names of those who professed ultra-evangelical views; I therefore felt it my duty distinctly to explain, before accepting the appointment, wherein my opinions differed from those which I knew them to hold. It was after I had made that statement that I was appointed. On looking at the papers of the Cheltenham College, I found the name of Mr. Close in conjunction with that of Mr. Bellairs and others. From this and what I had heard privately I was led to conclude that you were not identified with any particular party in the Church; that your views were not more exclusive than those of the Educational Committee of Queen’s College, who had expressed themselves satisfied with my teaching. I also placed in your hands a testimonial from the Professor of Theology there; my opinion was still further strengthened by your accepting the recommendation of the Dean of Westminster and including the Liturgy of the Church of England amongst the subjects taught.

‘Believing myself to hold moderate, certainly not ultra, views I did not feel myself open to the charge brought against me after my appointment. I think you will remember the subject of religion was in no way alluded to before.

‘Having thus, I hope, justified myself from any accusation of want of candour, I proceed to answer your questions as briefly as I can.

‘If you understand by the opus operatum “efficacy” of Baptism,—that all who are baptized are therefore saved (a doctrine which Mr. Shepheard assured me was held by some), I explicitly state that I do not hold that doctrine. I believe Baptism to be “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us” (Catechism); to be the appointed means for admitting members into the Church of Christ, according to St. Paul’s teaching that “Christ gave Himself for the Church that He might save it and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word” (Eph. v. 26); that “according to His mercy we are saved by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tit. iii. 5); that we are therein made “members of Christ” and adopted “children of God”; but when I use the word “regeneration” I do not understand that spoken of by St. John when he says, “he that is born of God cannot sin,” but that gift of life without which we are unable even to think any good thing; a gift which the Bishop solemnly declares to have been already received by those who come to be confirmed (Confirmation Service), but which requires daily renewal, a gift which we may lose by grieving God’s Holy Spirit by neglecting the means of grace, by hiding our Lord’s treasure. And this teaching I hold because I find it in the Bible, which I acknowledge with the sixth article to be our only rule of faith—because it seems to me the basis of St. Paul’s teaching (1 Cor. iii.; 2 Cor. vi. 10)—and it makes our responsibilities higher and deeper if we acknowledge with the Apostle in the language which he used to the whole of the Corinthian Church, that we are “the temples of the Holy Ghost.” I feel that any partial views which tell us of God’s grace being given to some and not to others are contrary to the whole tenor of Scripture. Your second question again cannot be categorically answered, since it has never been defined what are the opinions of the High Church party; I would say that I differ from some who assume that title....[37] I think no one could entertain a greater dread than I of those Romish opinions entertained by some “who went out from us, but were not of us”; indeed during the last six months I have been engaged in preparing an English History for the use of schools, because Ince’s Outlines (a book used in your College) inculcates Romish doctrines.

‘In conclusion, I must apologize for the unmethodical way in which I have expressed myself, as I am writing in great haste to catch the next post, and I have thought it right to reply to you without consulting any person or book, except the Bible and Prayer Book. I have endeavoured to be perfectly candid;—should the Council decide that my views are so unsound that I am unfit to occupy the position to which I have been appointed, I shall trust that they will allow me to make as public a statement of my opinions as they are obliged to make of my dismissal, for I shall feel that after this no person of moderate views will trust me, and my own conscience would not allow me to work with the extreme party in either high or low church.’

The diary of these two days gives a hint of the anxiety Miss Beale underwent when the attack was made upon her, and before she could receive answers to her own letters:—

‘July 12.—Mr. B(ell)’s letter about H(igh) Church from Cheltenham, and my answer. Some vanity. (Prayer) for resignation.

‘July 13.—Sent proofs to Cheltenham. Dined at the Curlings. Dr. Clarke very agreeable. Felt angry with Mr. Shepheard.’

Mr. Bell’s reply to Miss Beale’s letter suggests that the difficulty before the Council was less directly one of religious principle than that of working a school where certain precise opinions were not professed.

‘July 13, 1858.

‘My dear Miss Beale,—I have to-day laid your reply before Mr. Hartland and Dr. Comyn, the only two of my colleagues now here, and we have no fault to find with its tenor, which is explicit enough. Whether or not the fact of your holding the opinions thus avowed will lead to difficulties hereafter, we cannot say. If you feel conscientiously bound in and out of class to make known and inculcate your distinctive views of doctrine according to your interpretation of scripture and of our Liturgy and Articles, then it is easy to foresee the result. If, however (as I hope), you regard it of primary importance in the instruction of the children to inculcate love to God and His Son, and charity (in its manifold phases and with its relative duties), towards our fellows—treating as of far minor importance the doctrinal points about which good men differ so widely,—then I should not anticipate any active opposition from those to whom your peculiar opinions may be known.

‘The gentleman (a resident clergyman of some influence) to whom the two quoted letters were addressed, is now absent for a few days; and it remains to be seen whether his scruples and objections are, if not removed, at least rendered quiescent by your reply. If he should withdraw his children, and make known the grounds of doing so, the effect would undoubtedly be prejudicial to the College, and the experiment of conducting it under your auspices might be futile. Much may depend on what answer you can conscientiously make to this question:—

Holding the opinions you have expressed, should you consider it a duty and feel it incumbent on you to inculcate them in your Divinity instruction to the pupils?

If you could favour me by a few lines by return of post (as I leave before post hour on Friday morning) on this point, which I can annex to your letter of to-day, I could see my colleagues on the subject once more, and arrange what shall be done in my absence.—Yours truly,

J. Penrice Bell, Hon. Sec.’

Among Miss Beale’s papers exists an undated and much erased note, which appears to be her answer to the above. It begins with the remark: ‘I am glad to find the Council has not decided that I am so great a heretic as from your first letter I feared they would’; and it closes with the statement: ‘I quite feel it to be a Christian duty, if it be possible to live peaceably with all men, not giving heed to those things which minister questions rather than godly edifying, but I am sure you will feel I should be unworthy of your confidence could I through any fear of consequences resort to the least untruthfulness.’ Meanwhile Mr. Bellairs also wrote:—

‘ ... Mr. Bell’s letter was, I imagine, of a private character, as I had heard nothing of the subject of it before the arrival of your note of to-day.

‘So far as I am concerned, my impression is that we of the Council have nothing to do now with your private Theological opinions, whatever they are, unless they are so extreme as would damage the College (and within tolerably wide limits, I individually am very indifferent on the matter). I trust you have good sense and propriety sufficient to induce you to avoid all teaching which would in any degree disturb the character which the College ought, in my opinion, to maintain: viz. a place of learning in which all members of the Church of England may receive religious instruction in an honest and straightforward way, according to the teaching of the Bible and the formularies of the Church, without extreme interpretation one way or the other. I shall probably hear more of this matter when I see Mr. Bell.’

The storm was over. Though individuals of quite opposing views would, later on, occasionally cavil at points in Miss Beale’s method of teaching Scripture, she never really experienced further trouble on this ground. There are many, like the unknown lady to whose ‘High Church’ opinions the Council took objection, who would have felt they could not work in the spirit of compromise implied in the letters of Mr. Bell and Mr. Bellairs. There are some who might have agreed to do so, and in terror of offending, would have shirked the difficult task of religious instruction to the point of making it a lifeless thing. Miss Beale undertook it with her eyes open, and in spite, or possibly because of the hindrances in the way, her Scripture lessons became the very pivot of her teaching.

The diary again is very characteristic at this point. The anxiety of mind caused by her trouble was not permitted to excuse ill-temper. ‘July 4. Letter from Cheltenham. Neglect of prayer. Several times rude.’ This was the day which practically settled the fate of the Ladies’ College, and was the greatest visible landmark in Miss Beale’s life. In the ensuing fortnight, the last she spent at home, though there is an entry for every day, the name of Cheltenham does not occur. Two visits from Miss Brewer, who had been re-appointed to the Cheltenham staff with the title of Vice-Principal, ‘shopping,’ and ‘turning out,’ suggest preparations. There is no entry of the day on which she went, but from deduction it was August 4, and in the company of her mother.

CHAPTER VI
EARLY HISTORY OF THE LADIES’ COLLEGE

‘Old fables are not all a lie

Which tell of wondrous birth;

Of Titan children, Father Sky,

And wondrous Mother Earth.

Earth-born, my sister, thou art still

A daughter of the sky;

Oh, climb for ever up the hill

Of thy divinity.

...

For cause and end of all thy strife,

And unrest as thou art—

Still stings thee to a higher life

The Father at thy heart.’

George Macdonald, To my Sister,
on her Twenty-first Birthday.

Cambray House, which was Miss Beale’s home for fifteen years, is one of the finest buildings erected in the period when Cheltenham was being laid out with a view to royal visits. The Duke of Wellington himself stayed there in 1823.

Miss Dorothea Beale
1859.

The garden, mentioned in the early College reports as the ‘pleasure grounds,’ was a special delight to Miss Beale. In 1858 it was still untouched, and had many beautiful trees; one, a standard apricot tree, was—happy omen! covered with golden fruit in that first autumn of her life at Cheltenham. The house itself was beginning to change its character of family residence to that of a building adapted for school purposes, and before very long even the rooms given up for the use of the Principal and the Vice-Principal were encroached upon. Nor were those rooms furnished in character with the stately outside of the house. ‘The second-hand furniture procured would not have delighted people of æsthetic taste. Curtains were dispensed with as far as possible, and it was questioned whether a carving-knife was required by the Principal in her furnished apartments.’[38] To such domestic details Miss Beale was indifferent, but it must have been less easy to practise an economy which limited the extension of her work. ‘The teaching staff was reduced as low as possible, and the Principal and Vice-Principal gave up their half-holiday to chaperone those who took lessons from masters. The Principal taught all the English subjects to Classes I. and II., besides giving weekly lessons in Holy Scripture throughout the College.’

So long as the chief task of the Lady Principal was to prevent the College losing further ground, so long as her time and thought outside school hours were absorbed by anxiety over every pupil who came and went, still more over those who failed to come, there could be no rapid process of development. But it would have been impossible for Miss Beale to take up an existing educational work without at once making her individual mark upon it, and from the first the school felt the grasp of her able hand. At Casterton she had longed at once to change, to reform. At Cheltenham remodelling rather than revolution was her aim—fulfilment and wise development.

To understand the way in which she gave fresh life, and gradually refashioned the methods she found, it is necessary to go back to the prehistoric days before her arrival in 1858. There is little record of the educational system and teaching of that period, but it is certain that both were liberal and thorough, free from narrowness and petty tyranny, in advance of those existing in the ordinary boarding-school of the day. The curriculum, it is noteworthy, was arranged with a view to developing the mind and character. Latin was taught at first ‘very thoroughly,’ and the change by which after the first year it was replaced by German, which the Lady Principal could teach, was a question of economy, not of conciliation of parents who might think dead languages useless subjects of study. In making the substitution it was hoped, so runs the report of 1856, that instruction in German ‘might be made equally instrumental with that in the Latin language for conveying an accurate, exact, and logical knowledge of the principles of general Grammar. In this impression (your Council) find ... that they have not been mistaken.’

This attitude with regard to German was no new idea to Miss Beale, and she pursued the aims of the founders when she made the language a necessary subject of study for all pupils above the lower classes. Latin she discouraged, except in the case of those who were near the top of the College, maintaining that girls of seventeen and eighteen could learn in a few months as much Latin as would absorb the greater part of a boy’s whole time at school.

On the question of music the founders had shown themselves out of sympathy with the fashionable practice of a day when every ‘young lady’ was expected to perform on the piano, every governess to teach it. They conceded so far as to include music in the regular curriculum, but the expense of providing the requisite number of teachers and pianos for so many pupils was heavy. To meet this a system of class instruction was devised, by which the teacher gave a lesson to four pupils at once, the same piece being performed simultaneously on the treble and bass of two pianos. Whether such an arrangement was conducive to the production of good music or the formation of taste may be doubted. It suggests, indeed, a certain irony in those who hit upon a scheme that might just satisfy a foolish popular demand, assured that any who really cared for music would not grudge payment to the good teachers provided for the extra classes. The music difficulty occupies some space in the early reports which, in somewhat stilted and solemn fashion, set forth new ideals for the education of the ‘fairer sex.’ The following is quoted from the report of February 1856:—

‘Your Council cannot refrain from stating their belief that as long as the singular and extraordinary notion continues to prevail in the minds of those forming the upper classes of English Society, that dexterity of fingering on a single instrument is the most important part of female education, against, it might have been thought, not only the suggestions of common sense, but the practical lessons of later life, so long will the time required to be given for attaining even a low amount of proficiency in this sleight of hand, most seriously interfere with progress in all education and mental cultivation worthy of the name.

‘How far the acknowledged deficiency of many of the fairer sex in logical qualities and reasoning powers is due to this strange delusion, it is not for your Council to discuss; but they are not without hopes that the time may not be far distant when they will be supported in an arrangement which will place instrumental music altogether among the extra subjects, and leave them and the teachers free to elevate and improve, morally and intellectually, the condition of the female mind, unembarrassed by so unessential an accomplishment.’

These remarks were followed in 1857 by others:—

‘Your Council have nothing to add to or retract from what was said upon this subject in that Report: but, while they believe that the instruction in this so-called accomplishment is as efficient within these walls as it is capable, under all circumstances, of being made, they must repeat their regret that so vast a portion of valuable time should be sacrificed, in the earlier years of almost every Englishwoman who hopes to become a wife and mother, to that which is confessedly of no value in an intellectual point of view; and can, by no possibility, be of service to her in either of these two most important, and generally much coveted capacities.’

The College had opened with a goodly array of teachers of ‘accomplishments,’ as it was hoped thus to attract bye-students. These were gradually dismissed, and it cannot have added to the reputation of the school that some of the best-known masters, such as M. Théodore Colson, were considered too expensive. When the new Principal came there were only two teachers of music, one of whom was Mrs. Lloyd, mother of the great singer. Of this lady’s skill and loyalty Miss Beale always spoke with affectionate remembrance. The Lady Principal gained her support in a reform instituted very early in her reign, when separate piano lessons were again introduced, and the class system, disliked by Miss Beale on other than musical grounds, was swept away. She could not permit an arrangement which withdrew four pupils at once from the ordinary work of the school; through which important lessons were lost, and ‘collisions between class and music teachers made frequent.’ That the Council allowed such a change to be made is a testimony to their confidence in the new Principal. The immediate result was disastrous to the funds, and continued to be so until Mr. Brancker introduced his new financial scheme in 1860.

The founders of the College were not men to be content with knowledge obtained from epitomes; Miss Procter, also, was earnest and devoted in her work, and took trouble to teach by means of lectures; but only dictated notes were given, and these were not corrected. Her lessons were evidently interesting:—

‘We worked hard, and the teaching was very thorough. I have no doubt many of the pupils beside myself would willingly own the great debt of gratitude they owe to Miss Procter; not so much, perhaps, for what she taught, as for the way in which she educated us by developing and enlarging our minds. She possessed a good library, and we were often sent for books of reference, and shown the bearings of the subject we were studying. Physical geography was taught by Miss Brewer, who always carefully prepared her lessons. M. Tiesset made our French lessons delightful, even the grammar was a pleasure, and he seemed to enjoy teaching us as much as we did being taught by him.’

So wrote Mrs. Coulson (née Hartland) for Miss Beale’s History of the Ladies’ College, and another old pupil added:—

‘We had interesting lectures on Ancient History in general, and Greek History and Literature, from Miss Procter.... M. Tiesset and his sister taught French very well indeed, and I especially remember a chart of irregular verbs, M. Tiesset’s own arrangement, which, I believe, was a valuable help.’

Greek history was a favourite subject with Miss Procter, who neglected for it the teaching of any other. Miss Beale, fresh from her Textbook, at once began English and general history with her young first class. Regardless of the additional labour it brought her, she also taught the children to take notes, which she corrected for them. She gave weekly examinations on the subjects studied, thus affording opportunity for English composition.

No science nor mathematics were taught in the early days. Miss Beale would have liked to introduce Euclid at once, but says, ‘Had I done so, I might have been the death of the College, so I had to wait for the tide. I began my innovations with the introduction of scientific teaching, and under the name of physical geography I was able to teach a good deal. This subject was unobjectionable, as few boys learned geography.’

In one particular Miss Beale found the authorities of her new school striving to be abreast with the times. It was a rule of the constitution that the pupils should be examined annually, and each year a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge had undertaken the task. The first examiner (in 1853) was Mr. Nicolay, then Dean of Queen’s College, Harley Street. In the succeeding years a College master or some other local scholar conducted the examination and sent in a report to the Council.

The few specimens left of those early examination questions, even without the answers, mark a tide-line now interesting to trace.

At first the review of all knowledge was comprehended in twelve very simple questions, the most difficult mathematical calculation set before the first class being, ‘The Price of 3 ozs. of tea at 4s. 4d. per lb.’ The paper concluded thus:—

‘11. Write out that part of your duty towards your neighbour which explains the fifth commandment, and prove each assertion from Scripture.

‘12. Write out the following sentence in large text, and small hand, as specimens of your handwriting:

‘Integrity of understanding, and nicety of discernment, were not allotted.

‘(Attach to this paper specimens of your needlework and of your drawing).’

To the true teacher the interest of her work lies, beyond and above all subjects and methods, in the child. No tale, alas! nor letter remains to show what Miss Beale thought of her children when she first came among them. In one respect there must have been disappointment. Miss Procter had opened a rival school, which had drawn off the elder pupils; consequently the first class consisted of girls of thirteen and fourteen. But fortunately there are some of those same children who can recall the first impression made upon themselves by the new Principal, as she appeared on August 19, 1858. Mrs. Mace, a daughter of the late Bishop Bromby, was among these. She writes:—

‘I well remember Miss Beale’s first appearance at College, and how I and three or four special friends, who were already there ... felt fiercely loyal to the former rule, and told each other we knew exactly what the new Principal would be like, “thin, tall, spectacled, and old-maidy.” I can see her now as she appeared in reality,—the slight, young figure, the very gentle, gliding movements, the quiet face with its look of intense thoughtfulness and utter absence of all poor and common stress and turmoil, the intellectual brow, the wonderful eyes with their calm outlook and their expression of inner vision. You may be sure it was not long before the captious thirteen-year-olds were changed into warm admirers.

‘I do not think her quiet dignity, her strength and personality, her power of influence, could at any time of her strenuous and successful life have been greater or more impressive. We were few in number then, and, of course, saw more of her than was possible for later pupils.

‘I never remember her raising her voice, scolding us, being satirical or impatient with dulness or inattention. She was not satirical even when a small girl, on being asked what criticism might be passed on Milton’s treatment of Paradise Lost, ventured the audacious suggestion that the poet was “verbose.”’

Small instances of the new Principal’s own powers of observation and use of outside facts stand out through the mists of time; for instance,

‘an afternoon when she visited the needlework room and found me being most justly blamed for inefficiency. In kindly tones she said to the shy and clumsy culprit, “You ought to sew well, for your mother has such beautiful long fingers,” and somehow I felt comforted and encouraged. Then there was a day when I summoned up courage to go and tell her that I had been guilty of some small disobedience, as well as others who had been detected and punished. She seized the opportunity of impressing upon me that as I was (though only fourteen) a teacher in my father’s Sunday-school,—a fact of which I did not know she was aware,—I must surely see that obedience to rule was necessary. I can still hear the low, earnest tones in which she made her appeal to my sense of justice and right.’

The incident suggests a laxer state of discipline than was ever known after. Assuredly on this point Miss Beale found a good deal to do. Some of the ‘young ladies’ treated the good-natured French master as their brothers at Cheltenham College might have done. There is a story, too, of a convenient cupboard at the end of the schoolroom, large enough for a quiet game or gossip, and of the consternation produced on a little knot of girls who thought they had assembled unobserved, when the door was quietly opened upon them by the Lady Principal herself.

In the matter of discipline, as of tuition, Miss Beale appears to have worked on lines already laid down. Perhaps she kept before her mind counsel which she later gave to a pupil who left Cheltenham to be head of a Foundation School: ‘Remember the school belongs to the governors, not to you.’ But we are equally certain that she would not have worked on any lines which she did not approve. She found no system of rules and penalties. She did not wish to introduce one; but she made real and abiding, in a manner hardly credited by those outside, the rule introduced by Miss Procter, by which no pupil might speak to another without leave. With regard to this rule, which at once taught self-control and produced order, the ‘quietness which minimises irritability,’ it may be further remarked that in a place and time of ‘exclusive’ views, the College could hardly have existed without it. The rule, kept, in itself prevented any pupil from making friends for the first time in College; at any rate, it enabled her not to do so. There was, however, when Miss Beale first came, a good deal of speaking without leave. This disobedience with other irregularities she gradually overcame, not by an overawing personality alone, but with the ‘quiet’ ways and the word in season of which more than one old pupil speaks.

Tracing in sequence the history of Miss Beale’s first two years, when the College, though in the eyes of the world slowly perishing, was really sinking strong foundations, the Report of 1859 stands out with its commendation of the new Lady Principal. ‘Of Miss Beale herself it may suffice to remark, that to varied and extensive knowledge in all branches of Education, and skill in imparting it, she unites a manner and disposition which at once command the respect and win the affection of her Pupils, and renders it pleasant to your Council to maintain that frequent personal communication with her which is greatly conducive to the wellbeing of the Institution.’ Beyond this there is little definite to record, save the steady half-yearly diminution in the number of pupils and of the balance at the bank, and the consequent retrenchments, implying fresh burden and effort for the small teaching staff.

In her History of the College, Miss Beale dismissed as with a smile the tale of her early struggles, when each quarter it seemed less likely that the school could live, till in the last half-year of 1859 there were only sixty-five pupils and but a few pounds in the bank. But she admitted that perhaps only a barrister sitting in his chambers, and waiting in vain for briefs, could sympathise with the anxiety of that time, when upon one or two pupils more or less depended the very existence of the College. The story she tells of recalling pupils, sent from the door by a servant who said she was at dinner, shows her unwearying zeal: ‘I sent her to fetch them back, saying, I am never at dinner.’ No pupil was lost for want of watchfulness. None could give notice without her knowing the reason, and in many cases getting the notice recalled. The problem was to live on, working in a way the public had not learned to appreciate. Those were days when nervous strain was little known and scarcely feared. School hours were long; the time-table of the College then involved morning and afternoon school for most days in the week. To one who sought ever to instruct with freshness and zeal, and to take trouble to make her pupils think for themselves, the work of teaching twice a day through the long half-years would now be counted an undue effort and strain. In addition to this, Dorothea Beale took upon herself, as if it were her own personal need (and she made it so), the daily fretting anxiety of making the College pay. This she never really threw off, though in the last years of established success it became somewhat modified. The economic strain was relaxed when Mr. Brancker’s able hand was laid upon the finances; the labour of teaching was lightened when the hours were changed, and when with gradually improving fortunes more and better teachers were engaged. Doubtless she might have taken advantage of these improvements to give herself more ease of body and mind. But she cared for no reward, save the ‘wages of going on.’ Her eager, nobly ambitious nature responded but too quickly to the claims of the College, so with each step made certain, there was ever immediately before her another to be fought for and won. It were hardly possible to say too much in praise of the enthusiastic self-sacrifice which made the College what it is; but some of the results of the early strife with fortune were to be deplored. It left her too conscious of the place of the institution in the public eye; it made it hard for her to justify a more generous expenditure than was possible at first.

The improved discipline, the invigorating teaching, even the efforts of the new Principal herself, failed to attract pupils, and when in 1860 the lease of Cambray House expired, no one was willing to take the responsibility of renewing it.

Forty years later, when looking back on that time of gloom, Miss Beale wrote: ‘How often I was full of discouragement. It was not so much the want of money as the want of ideals which depressed me. If I went into society I heard it said, “What is the good of education for our girls? They have not to earn their living.” Those who spoke did not see that for women as for men it is a sin to bury the talents God has given; they seemed not to know that the baptismal right was the same for girls as for boys, alike enrolled in the army of light, soldiers of Jesus Christ.

‘But helpers were sent with a faith and courage greater than mine.’

First among these was Mr. J. Houghton Brancker, who, already a member of the Council, became at the moment of deepest need, auditor of the accounts, and brought to the service of the College his great knowledge of business and enthusiastic interest in education. Mr. Brancker had come to live in Cheltenham for the sake of his daughters, in the year that Miss Beale became Principal. He was churchwarden to Mr. Bromby, whose liberal views he shared. Mr. Brancker had more than zeal and interest; he could think out a plan and pursue it. He spared no effort or trouble where a good end was to be obtained. When he became financier of the College he gave it ‘a large share of his time, and as a paid secretary could not be afforded, he undertook all duties gratuitously.’ He made out a new scheme by which the ordinary fees were lowered, but music and drawing became extras. It was too great a venture to renew the lease of Cambray House; but the owner of the house consented to take the College on as a yearly tenant. The new scheme of payment helped at once to bring improvement, the number of pupils went up, and Mr. Brancker went so far as to order ‘seven new benches, three of them with backs.’

Mr. T. Houghton Brancker

This act of extravagance was followed almost immediately by an enlargement of the schoolroom, making it seventy feet long. Mr. Brancker proved that this additional space was really a financial economy; for with it all the pupils could be contained in one room, and the necessity of increasing the staff was deferred. As an alternative to the extension he breathed the suggestion, for the first time probably in the history of the College, of a new building, a building of its own, should a suitable site be obtained. In his letter on this subject to Mr. Hartland, the ‘young ladies’ for the first time appear as ‘children.’ Mr. Brancker’s dream was destined to be deferred for ten years; but was borne in mind by those whom it most concerned. It may be thought he was premature even in the enlargement, in spending at once the small profit made out of the increasing number of pupils. But he did not aim at making a fortune for the College. From the first it was proposed that the shareholders should reap no financial profit, and Mr. Brancker wished it to be evident that every penny was needed for the improvement of the work: hence, it was no part of his plan to have a balance in hand. His effort was to keep up the prestige of the College in every way, and in order to do this he limited the number of shares issued to the actual number of pupils, in order that they might not be advertised for sale at a lower price than that at which they were purchased.

In three years from the time at which Mr. Brancker became auditor, he was able to write: ‘February 1863. We promised assets over £1000, they are £1076. We promised a money balance of over £200, and it is £356. So I think the shareholders may have confidence in their Chancellor of the Exchequer. We may well be proud of the result, but we are deeply indebted to Miss Beale’s exertions for it, and I am glad her remuneration (by capitation fees) is so much increased.’

By 1864 all pressing anxiety for the existence of the College was over. With its one hundred and thirty pupils it was practically full. A regularly constituted boarding-house was opened. Here the day-pupils, whose parents were leaving Cheltenham, could be taken, and thus another cause of diminution in the number of pupils was put an end to. Undivided attention and care could now be given to the work.

In February a change which greatly told on this was made, a change which now seems to have been only wise and reasonable, but which was at the time regarded as extraordinary and revolutionary. Longer morning hours were substituted for morning and afternoon school each day, Thursday afternoons being set apart for dancing and needlework. Possibly Miss Beale anticipated the outcry that would be raised; for she asked the mother of one of the pupils, one likely to be opposed to the change, to be with her at the Council meeting at which it was determined, ostensibly because she herself dreaded the meeting, but doubtless in order that a representative of the parents might hear the subject fully discussed. No notice of the change was sent to the shareholders, parents and guardians received an intimation scarcely a week before it took place. Before that week was over, stormy articles appeared in the local papers, notices of removal were sent in, and a memorial from the shareholders and others caused Mr. Brancker hastily to summon another Council meeting, and to write to Mr. Hartland, ‘May I specially beg that you will attend ... as I consider the vital interests and the future prospects of the College are at stake.’ Mr. Brancker and Miss Beale recognised that now or never the battle must be won. Either the College authorities must rule, or the local papers and popular clamour.

The objections of the memorialists were that the change was a coup d’état; that four hours’ continuous study was too much for the children; that the governesses were idle in wanting a half-holiday every afternoon. But the real ground of dislike was doubtless that parents shirked the responsibility of looking after their children in the afternoons, and preferred schoolroom arrangements which would provide them with occupation during the whole day.

The Council replied in a circular to the parents that they would limit the experiment to a period of two months, after which they would act upon the opinion of the parents; and should the new plan be adopted, the quarter’s fees should be returned to those who wished to remove their children. The advantages of the change were then set forth.

It had been made to meet the objections raised to physical and mental effort following immediately upon a hurried meal; to the young ladies passing constantly through the streets, to the trouble of sending servants, the exertion of so much walking, the time wasted in dressing and undressing, and to many others.

Medical men, among whom were Dr. Barlow and Dr. Gull,[39] were asked for their opinions; these were uniformly favourable to the change. The long morning hours were lightened by the introduction of calisthenics, drawing, and needlework, and it was arranged that certain teachers should attend the College every afternoon to supervise the preparation of lessons when the parents desired it. When a general meeting on the subject took place at the end of the specified two months, only eight voted for the old system. ‘It was found,’ says Miss Beale, ‘that more work was done in less time, for attention was closer ... teachers and children had been able to get some afternoon exercise.’

What was then thought so extraordinary has since become the order of the day for girls’ schools. In this matter Cheltenham led the way, a similar change was made by Miss Buss in 1865, and when the hours of the Girls’ Public Day School Company were arranged in 1873, it was on the plan of putting all regular studies into the morning hours.

At the end of Miss Beale’s first six years the College was in a much improved condition. There were ten classes, where she had found six. The notable changes on the staff, which was now larger, were that Miss Brewer had left to open a school for little boys in Brighton, and Miss Anna Beale and the Miss Eatons had joined. Increased prosperity, and above all an older first class, enabled Miss Beale to introduce some of the subjects which at first were thought to be too unacceptable to be safe. There was, of course, opposition from those who were constantly repeating that ‘girls would be turned into boys by studying the same subjects.’ What, it was asked by some parents, do girls want with Euclid or advanced arithmetic? There were, however, a few who understood Miss Beale’s aims, and she was ever grateful for the support they gave her.

The method of annual examinations was gradually improved. When there was so little money available, local examiners, some of whom had no claim to the position, were chosen. Miss Beale records her conviction that a German examiner, who was at the time teaching in a local school, was a waiter from some hotel who had come to England out of the season. One English examiner recommended that history should be taught backwards. This was then regarded as an astounding proposition. Mr. Brancker fully sympathised with Miss Beale’s wish to improve the standard by obtaining examiners from one of the universities, and obtained permission from the Council to seek them himself in Oxford. The result was that for two or three years Mr. Sidney Owen undertook the principal part of the annual examination. His name was the first of a long list of men notable for scholarly achievement or educational progress, who in later years conducted these examinations at Cheltenham. In his first report Mr. Owen said much for the moral characteristics revealed by the intellectual work it was his business to survey. He concludes a very favourable judgment by saying he must not omit to mention that there were particular instances of remarkable excellence of which the College may justly be proud. Some of the papers he said, ‘would do credit to any Institution and gain high marks in any public examination.... May the College long give the lie to the miserable and pernicious fancy that accomplishments ought to be the staple of a lady’s education, and that her reason is not designed by the Almighty to be highly cultivated.’ But he thought the papers too long. Mr. Owen was indeed the very first adventurer into that flood of response which examination questions cause to flow from uncontrolled feminine pens. Mr. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was in 1863 the first university examiner in arithmetic and mathematics.

This year was a fruitful one to Miss Beale for yet another reason. It was the year of the completion of her Chart. Always interested in history, ideally and practically, she had as early as the Queen’s College days adopted a French scheme by which the learning of dates was to be simple and easy, and the connections of history, the bearing of facts and events upon each other, were to be seen at a glance. She now perfected and brought it into use. The plan was based on the assumption that a fact is more readily grasped through the eye, than by the ear. By means of large squares, which were to represent centuries, enclosing smaller ones, which should denote years, the whole coloured in different shades according to the different ruling dominions and dynasties, a complete outline of the history of a country was to appear on one page. The reckoning was made by which ninety-nine was counted as the last year of a century, with the result that in the year 1900 the chart found itself somewhat discredited. But this method of counting, of course, in no way interfered with the system. In learning dates at the College, great stress was laid upon having a chart open before the student, so that she might grow familiar with its look, and become able to call up the knowledge of any special event by remembering the position of a dot in a certain square. There were those to say with Canon Francis Holland, founder of the Church of England High Schools in London, ‘Why was I born before such aids were given to the understanding?’ Whether this system was indeed the royal road Miss Beale had planned for her pupils may well be questioned; but the Chart had at any rate the value of a simple vade mecum of chronology, introducing every girl at College to the minimum of facts she should know in the history of the world.

The Chart drew for its author a last kind word of recognition from an old friend, when Mr. Mackenzie wrote:—

‘Westbourne College, 1863.

‘ ... I am proud to think that I had any part, however humble, in directing your mind to the Tabular style of teaching; and I am gratified to find that one of whom I had so early formed a favourable opinion, has proved to be so able a worker in the great cause of Education.

‘I hope that you and your sisters, as well as my Godson, quite understand that I entertain for you all the feelings of an old friend, who values you on your own account as well as for the sake of both your Parents.—Believe me to be always your sincere Friend,

C. Mackenzie.’

So, in the best sense the College grew. Not in outward prosperity alone, in teaching power, in class rooms; but within. The invisible fabric of mind, and will, and heart, co-ordinated by one great idea, was slowly being raised. The ‘aborigines,’ as those who were girls of the Cambray House time call themselves, even insist that at no time of her career was Miss Beale’s personal influence so direct as then, when teaching so many subjects herself, and in small classes, she came personally in contact with nearly all the older pupils. All classes had their place and desks in the long hall; but the lowest division had a separate schoolroom as soon as funds justified it, and the rooms of the house, even on occasion those appointed to the Principal, were used as classrooms. Miss Beale did not often teach in the large hall. The young ones were cleared out of their division room when she gave a big lecture; a small class, such as one for German translation, would be taken in her drawing-room. There came a moment when even her bedroom was invaded. Those small classes of mathematics or German were more especially the ones which endeared teacher and pupils to each other. There was always enough personal awe and inspiration about the Lady Principal to ensure a well-prepared lesson from really interested pupils, and often beyond the lesson there would be delightful talk. Iphigenie in Tauris recalls many thoughts beyond German translation, and the verbal exercise itself was deprived of every vestige of dulness by her great interest in the growth and development of words. No noble thought, no fine simile was allowed to pass unnoticed; other poems were compared, or perhaps a passage would be given to be translated into English verse. In the mere suggestion of this, what hope and encouragement lay for many who hardly liked to own their pleasure in such an attempt, or who had found earlier efforts of the kind thwarted by criticism too bracing for beginners! It may indeed be thought that Miss Beale had always an unwarranted admiration for the verse-making of her pupils. If in this she sometimes offended the cause of pure literature, her attitude towards it was yet surely the right one for a teacher.

This must indeed have been one of the happiest periods of her work, when she first came into near touch with the children she had seen grow up about her, and felt herself able to give impetus and training to growing aspirations and developing thought, when her sympathy was constantly appealed to in the way in which she could best give it.

‘It is my peculiar privilege to have spent all my College career in her class, to go through years of her special personal teaching. In later days, when the College assumed larger dimensions, such an experience must have been rare; to those who could claim it, it meant a potent influence for life. How vividly can I recall her sitting on her little dais, scanning the long school-room and discovering anything amiss at the far end of it; or making a tour of inspection to the various classes with a smiling countenance that banished terror.’

So writes one old pupil of that time. Another speaks of that deep tenderness which she ever felt, but often concealed, and was not afraid of showing in a case of special need.

‘When I was almost a child at College I lost my mother, and shall never forget Miss Beale’s tender sympathy and help. She took such interest in my preparation for Confirmation, and brought me herself to my first Communion,—just she and I alone; a day I shall always remember. All through my girlhood she was a kind and ready adviser, and continued her interest throughout my married life. One always felt whatever happened to one, Now I must tell Miss Beale.’

It is sad to know that Miss Beale was often depressed in that hopeful spring-time of the College by the tongues of gossip and slander. She had so profound a horror of petty talk about other people’s business, that she possibly exaggerated the importance of carelessly repeated and untrue reports. She mentions the local gossip from which the College had to suffer.

‘Tales were handed about that it was impossible to trace. It was said that accomplishments were neglected, that the pupils played on dumb pianos. Persons who did not exist, and others who would never have been admitted, were said to attend the College. News was sent out to Canada that the cattle plague was prevailing, and the report was half believed. The mere circulation of absurd falsehoods is, however, often enough to decide a mother to place her daughter elsewhere; sometimes no falsehood at all, a contemptuous tone is enough. Such things can only be met by silence and steady and unobtrusive work. Perhaps one is better off without the children of those who accept their rule of life from Mrs. Grundy. Certainly such opposition and persecution prove an excellent tonic, and I personally feel grateful for it, though it was a bitter draught. We had to remember that the interests of some were injured by the establishment of the College; the wish being father to the thought, people would sometimes believe what they said.’

Matters reached a climax when an absolutely untrue statement concerning cruelty to animals was set on foot about Mrs. Fraser, who had opened a boarding-house in connection with the College. The real gravity of the report lay in the circumstance that some in the College had listened to it, and it was necessary to address the teachers on the subject. It was a painful task, but bravely faced by the Lady Principal, who said:

‘Now I have nothing to do to judge them that are without. We must cheerfully bear evil-speaking. But if it come from within, the matter is for that reason a serious one; for this reason I feel it must be traced up to its source.... I feel I can appeal to you as lovers of truth, as those who feel that no advantages of education, of health, or any other, can compensate for the disadvantage which would arise to any children who lived in an atmosphere of evil-speaking, lying, and slandering.’

Thus grasped, the nettle ceased to sting. It was perhaps a small incident scarcely worth noting. But Miss Beale remembered it as one which caused great discomfort at the time, and it had far-reaching consequences. Her power then was more limited than in after years. She learned through this difficulty the need for more liberty to act independently of the Council in the internal management of the College. In her efforts to get the evil rooted out from their midst, she nearly exceeded her powers. This, doubtless, taught her to prosecute her reforms more warily. Above all, it may be believed that she gained a fresh access of that self-control so necessary to all governors. For it is only in fiction that difficulty can be overcome by a sudden word or action; in real life work has to be carried on despite the obstacle;—growth takes place under pressure.

Outside the work of the College there is not a great deal to relate about Miss Beale’s life at this period. Her holidays were sometimes spent in visits to her family.

After the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. John Beale, Hyde Court, the old family house came into the possession of Miss Beale’s mother, who had been left a widow in 1862. In 1868 Mrs. Beale came with two daughters to reside at Hyde Court until her death in 1881. There the Lady Principal often went in the holidays, finding pleasure in the beautiful surroundings. An old pupil tells of the delights of a visit to her there,—of Mrs. Beale, whom her daughter Dorothea greatly resembled, calm and majestic looking, of the glorious view from the windows of the room appropriated to Miss Beale and her large correspondence.

A good part of the holidays even then was spent in Cheltenham, but there were some visits abroad. One year Miss Beale accompanied her brother Edward, then recovering from illness, to the Black Forest. On another occasion she went with her sister to Chamounix, and enjoyed the mountain walks. In 1864 she spent some time at Zürich. More than once she went to Paris. This continental travel was by no means for recreation and refreshment only. It nearly always implied visits to schools, where fresh and foreign methods were studied. No opportunity of gaining new ideas was ever neglected, for Miss Beale could not understand ever living apart from her work. In the holidays, as in school-time, she was still working, though in a different way. In Cheltenham itself there was little time or opportunity for recreation. Society, as the word is generally understood, had little to say to the new head-mistress, whose insignificant figure and plain dress did not provoke much interest. Her absence of small talk, her quiet intellectual face, her reputation as a clever woman, her connection with Queen’s College, all represented something unwonted and new. She had received no welcome from the religious world of Cheltenham, whose leaders, Mr. Close and Mr. Boyd, though one of them had accepted a seat on the Council, remained aloof from the interests of the Ladies’ College, perhaps sharing the prejudice still prevalent against any departure from the beaten track of women’s education.

It was of little moment to Miss Beale to find herself unsought by society, for she seldom cared to spend an evening from her work. She could not understand the position, which some have thought it wise to take up, that it is good for a school to have its head seen in society. She held it to be best for a school that its head should give herself unremittingly to her work,—disastrous to the welfare of any pupils for their teacher to sacrifice to social engagements the time she ought to give to the preparation of lessons. The friends of that early time were a few thoughtful people who were interested like herself in education.

On first coming to Cheltenham Miss Beale, to please Miss Brewer, she said, attended Christchurch, but she soon left this for St. Philip’s and St. James’ at Leckhampton, and for St. Paul’s. Both these churches were less obviously in the possession of wealthy seat-holders than the churches in the town. To St. Philip’s she went at that time when she ‘wanted to be quiet,’ taking up a position near the door. All the middle of that church was then occupied by charity children and the poor, but there were in the rich part of the congregation many whose names have interest from one cause or another.

The incumbent of St. Philip’s, the Rev. A. E. Riddle, was a man of much learning. He had been Bampton Lecturer in 1832, and was the author of a well-known Latin Dictionary and other books. Miss Beale felt at home in his great library, and visits to Mrs. Riddle at Tudor Lodge were among the few recreations. Mr. Riddle died in 1859, and for the next few years she seems to have regularly attended St. Paul’s or Holy Trinity churches. She found real friends in the parsonage-house at St. Paul’s, but the immediate tie was soon broken, for in 1864 Mr. Bromby was made Bishop of Tasmania.

The claims of relationship and early friendship were not forgotten, but there was little time for letter-writing beyond the ever-growing correspondence connected with work. Mr. Beale wrote playfully of his daughter’s growing absorption:—

‘You always write as if you were at the top of your speed, and this is not good. I doubt not you have a great deal to occupy your time and your attention, but pray do not be always in a hurry, you will inevitably break down if you are so—you will lose in power what you gain in speed, as certainly as in mechanics; and with greater danger to the regularity of the machine.... I am really fearful to take up your time.... I daresay now you are scrambling through my note without that respect to which the writer and the subject are entitled. But pray remember that to neglect (the care of your health) is the worst economy in the world....

‘I will now release you, but I was unwilling quite to lose your correspondence, though do not write to me until you have a little patient leisure.’

Thus, in difficulty and obscurity, the life-work of Dorothea Beale was begun. But hers was a light which could not long be hid. Each year it burned more surely and shone further afield. By 1864, when the Endowed Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted, she was known as a successful head-mistress whose views and methods were worth hearing. With Miss Buss and others she was asked to give evidence.

CHAPTER VII
A ROYAL COMMISSION

‘I learnt the royal genealogies

Of Oviedo, the internal laws

Of the Burmese Empire,—by how many feet

Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe,

What navigable river joins itself

To Lara, and what census of the year five

Was taken at Klagenfurt....

I learnt much music, ...

fine sleights of hand

And unimagined fingering.’

E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh.

This volume, which memorialises one great name in one field of women’s work, is not the place in which to dwell upon the details of that work in other departments. But it may be remarked in passing that the educational movement itself was but a part—an essential part—of a larger one. It seemed, Miss Beale often said in speaking of this time, that women, like the damsel of old, heard the Voice of the Master penetrating the slumber of death, bidding them Arise. And they obeyed. They arose in many and various ways to minister to Him.

The first sign of this awakening was publicly seen in 1844, when Dr. Pusey engaged several leading laymen, among whom was Mr. Gladstone, to help him in the foundation of an Anglican Sisterhood. Two or three Orders date from before the opening of Queen’s College in 1848; those at Clewer and Wantage followed soon after. The devotion of Florence Nightingale and her little band in 1854 led many to follow her example, and the reform of nursing steadily if slowly followed. In 1866, before the reports of the Schools’ Inquiry were published, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell took an M.D. degree in Switzerland, and Miss Garrett began to study for one in London. The desire for better teaching and training was widespread. The establishment of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was a part of a larger movement which was affecting the whole country. Sixteen years had passed since the opening of Queen’s College had unsealed the fountain of knowledge for women. Immediately after, in 1849, a college had been established on undenominational lines. This was Bedford College, which found a liberal donor in Mr. Reid, and among its first teachers counted Francis Newman, De Morgan, and Dr. Carpenter. These led the way. Then in 1850 the great school which will for ever be associated with the name of Frances Mary Buss was opened in Camden Road, its enterprising head-mistress having there removed the private school she had carried on successfully for some years, to develop it on the lines of a public school, under the enlightened supervision of Mr. Laing. Cheltenham followed four years later, and these two, for many years the only public schools for girls in the country, may be considered the direct offspring of Queen’s College.

The general condition of girls’ education remained unimproved some years longer. Yet amid the thousands of private schools where worthless or poor teaching prevailed, there were a few which had come into the hands of capable women who had been inspired by the noble ideals of those who led the religious and intellectual thought of the day. The name of Elizabeth Sewell is representative of these; but for the most part they lived and died unknown, because their work was of less public moment than that of the great leaders. Yet, in an account of women’s education it seems ungracious to name only the well known, however great, and to pass unnoticed the wise virgins, less prominent but not less faithful, whose lamps shone and were replenished through the night. In her death, as in her work on earth, Dorothea Beale was not alone. Miss Sewell, aged ninety, passed but a few weeks before her, and very shortly after two other unknown fellow-workers, who had not laboured in vain. The Times of January 1907 told of Miss Piper, the founder and head of Laleham. Of Miss Piper it could be said, that at a time when the instruction given to girls was of a formal character, ‘she set herself to make her pupils think, to stimulate interest, to enforce thoroughness.’ These were the very points on which the Schools’ Commission found girls’ education defective. A fortnight later died Emily Milner, who was for fifty years head of St. Mary’s School at Brighton, to which she devoted all her small income. She taught with marvellous energy and freshness, inspiring her pupils themselves to be zealous and persevering, and keeping them in touch with all that was best in the rapid advance and change of modern education. But such head-mistresses were rare. The Commissioners seldom found either thoroughness or freshness in the schools they inspected.

The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted in 1864, a year in which John Ruskin, in a lecture at Manchester, made a passionate appeal to rich women to claim their right to serve—and reign. His cry did not reach a larger public until, eight years later, the lecture was published under the title ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ in Sesame and Lilies. Like the simultaneous discovery of some great star, by watchers strange to one another and half a continent apart, the movement for enlarging the scope of women’s work was furthered by men of divers ways and methods, heralded by visionaries like Tennyson and Ruskin, marshalled into deliberate order by high-hearted officials like the Secretary of the Governesses’ Benevolent Society and the School Inspector Joshua Fitch. Possibly no Assistant Commissioner, as he drew up his report, recalled the ringing words of Ruskin. But though the medium varies to the stretch of difference between the inspiration of a great poem and the deliberate statements of a blue-book, we recognise the same force behind both, and see both alike to be channels for one great stream of tendency. The conclusions drawn from the report, the resulting effects seen in new schools and organised public examinations, miss nothing of their special value if regarded in connection with such words as these:—

‘Let a girl’s education be as serious as a boy’s. You bring up your girls as if they were meant for side-board ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers ... teach them, also, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being.... There is hardly a girl’s school in this Christian Kingdom where the children’s courage and sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a door.... And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but noble teachers.’[40]

The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted to examine into the existing state of education above the elementary grade, and to report on measures needed for its improvement, having special regard to all endowments applicable, or which could rightly be made applicable, thereto. By the instance of Miss Emily Davies, girls’ schools were included in the inquiry. Among the Commissioners was Lord Lyttelton, who was regarded by those who wished to improve women’s education as a friend to girls. He had manfully asserted their right to a share of the endowments, and of women to a share in the management of girls’ schools. Sir Stafford Northcote, Dr. Temple, and Mr. Forster were also members of the Commission. Among the Assistant Commissioners, whose business it was to visit and report upon schools, were such well-known names as those of T. H. Green, J. G. Fitch, and J. Bryce.

No schools outside the eight selected districts were visited, but the Principals of some beyond their limit were requested to give evidence before the Commissioners in London. In the year 1868-9 reports and evidence were gradually issued in a series of twenty large blue-books. Of these volumes about nineteen-twentieths related to the education of boys and general questions, and about one-twentieth to the education of girls alone.

Miss Beale hailed the Commission as a means of bringing the thousand inefficiencies of girls’ education to the light. She took advantage of it in an address she gave in 1865 at Bristol, at a meeting of that now extinct body, the Social Science Congress, when she pleaded that, for boys and girls alike, education should be planned with the view of developing character. Her argument was none the less weighty because so carefully guarded:—

‘Let me say at once that I desire to institute no comparison between the mental abilities of boys and girls, but simply to say what seems to be the right means of training girls, so that they may best perform that subordinate part in the world to which, I believe, they have been called.

‘First, then, I think that the education of girls has too often been made showy, rather than real and useful; that accomplishments have been made the main thing, because these would, it was thought, enable a girl to shine and attract, while those branches of study especially calculated to form the judgment, to cultivate the understanding, and to discipline the character (which would fit her to perform the duties of life) have been neglected; and thus, while temporary pleasure and profit have been sought, the great moral ends of education have been too often lost sight of.

‘To the poorer classes the toil and struggle of their daily life do, to some extent, afford an education which gives earnestness, and strength, and reality; and if we would not have the daughters of the higher classes idle and frivolous, they too must be taught to appreciate the value of work. We must endeavour to give them, while young, such habits, studies, and occupations as will brace the mind, improve the taste, and develop the moral character. They must learn, not for the sake of display, but from motives of duty. They must not choose the easy and agreeable, and neglect what is dull and uninviting. They must not expect to speak languages without mastering the rudiments; nor require to be finished in a year or two, but impatiently refuse to labour at a foundation.’

These words were pioneers of the Commissioners’ reports, in which they find a literal echo. The reports, with her own evidence and that of other ladies interested in education, were by Miss Beale preserved for posterity. She perceived instinctively that if they were not brought into general circulation all would soon be forgotten, much never known at all. With that stern sense of economy which caused her never to waste an opportunity or a scrap of material, she took the task upon herself. She obtained permission to republish the matter relating to girls’ schools in a single volume, for which she wrote a preface. In this she dealt with the evidence of the Commissioners, discussing at some length the questions of examinations and overwork. But she sought chiefly, as she had already done a few years before in an article in Fraser’s Magazine,[41] to show the need of real study for women, the advantage to be gained for character and mind from such subjects as history and literature.

The general report of the Commissioners on Girls’ Education forms the first chapter of Miss Beale’s blue-book. It opened with a quotation to the effect that an educated mother is of even more importance than an educated father. Miss Beale may have thought this an exaggerated statement; but she must have welcomed and republished it with some satisfaction. She was for ever having it dinned into her ears, by those who opposed all serious study for their daughters, that girls should be educated to be wives and mothers. Mrs. Grey showed the real fallacy of the statement, in a paper which was the direct result of the republished reports, when she pointed out that girls were not being educated to be wives, but to get husbands. A happy marriage Mrs. Grey held to be ‘the summum bonum of a woman’s life ... not an object to be striven for, but to be received as the supreme grace of fate when the right time and the right person come.’[42] With Miss Beale and Miss Emily Davies she deprecated the education which is designed from the first to fit and prepare for a special position in life. She would have women and men alike, working men, tradesmen, men of fortune educated as human beings, not technically instructed for some special walk in life. In eloquent words she pictured the ideal for which she and others like-minded were striving, and were seeking to attain by the practical method of enlightening public opinion, founding schools, asking for public examinations. She wrote:—

‘The true meaning of the word education is not instruction.... It is intellectual, moral, and physical development, the development of a sound mind in a sound body, the training of reason to form just judgments, the disciplining of the will and affections to obey the supreme law of duty, the kindling and strengthening of the love of knowledge, of beauty, of goodness, till they become governing motives of action.’

Mrs. Grey’s conclusions were the same as those of the Commissioners, who complained that there was no demand for the education of girls, the cause of the indifference being that low idea which regards only the money value of education, and estimates it solely as a means of getting on. Girls were taught with a view to increasing their attractiveness before marriage, rather than with that of increasing their happiness and usefulness after. This was the general cause of dissatisfaction, but there were many details.

One and all complained that, with the exception of quite a few schools, the education of girls in the middle classes was much worse than that existing in the elementary schools of the day. This was of course specially the case in subjects like arithmetic, and arose greatly from the mistaken notion that they were of no use to girls. The Commissioners were unanimous in condemning the prevailing method of instruction by means of such books as Mangnall’s Questions and the like, termed by Mr. Bryce ‘the noxious brood of catechisms.’ Of this, be it said, Miss Mangnall’s famous work, which bears witness to its author’s well-stored mind, and which reached nearly a hundred editions, was the best. The ‘Questions’ demanded indeed the knowledge of such useless facts as the number of houses burned in the Great Fire of London; but there were in use, in the numerous small private schools of the period, cheaper and more stupid books, in which the information was not merely useless, but even defied common sense. A small catechism on ‘Science,’ entitled ‘Why and Because,’ concluded a long list of inept questions with: ‘Why do pensioners and aged cottagers put their teapots on the hob to draw?’ In some books, facts of varying nature—of history, geography, grammar, etc.—were all jumbled together. It is not surprising that girls instructed by the parrot-like, inconsequent methods of such lesson-books, passed from school with no love of reading.

The Commissioners complained further, that though French and music were held to be the most important subjects to which a girl should devote herself, they were nearly always very badly taught. They spoke of time wasted at the piano; they calculated the thousands of hours given to music which was not worth hearing at the last. They gave instances of ludicrous mistakes in French, which no effort of visiting masters could improve into anything like a real knowledge of the language, because rudimentary grammar had never been mastered. They spoke of drawing taught with an equal disregard of thoroughness, and with still more disastrous result. ‘The common practice of masters touching up their pupils’ performances for exhibition at home fosters a habit of dishonesty, and that too prevalent tendency running through the whole of female education, the tendency to care more for appearance than reality, to seem rather than to be.’[43]

Some spoke of the absence of healthy interests, of the need for games, a need which appealed but little to Miss Beale, in whose own youth play was marked by its absence only. Many urged the necessity for founding in every town public schools similar to boys’ grammar schools, where girls could obtain a sound education, without accomplishments, at a low cost.

These reports embody a number of facts concerning a state of things now happily passed away. Hundreds of small private schools might have read their doom in them, for the establishment of many public schools, endowed and otherwise, soon followed the inquiry. We see the poor sham education, with its wrong notions of the beautiful and the best, vanish without a regret. Yet, since all human effort has its worth and place, is it possible and fair to say one word above its grave? Was there no genuine wish to give pleasure pleading in the miserable pieces of the boarding-school young lady, and even in the painful drawings which the master’s touch failed to make tolerable? They testify at least to something out of the work-a-day sphere, to the desire for the ‘something afar,’ often the first step to a truer vision. Precious years of girlhood spent on the vain effort to attain accomplishments speak of some dim perception of the refinement and uplifting which men look for in women. Ill-devised, badly attempted, poorly carried out, the thought of giving delight was not only mercenary in aim; behind it was some consciousness of a real human need. The educators of women to-day should know better than to despise its pleading, however imperfectly expressed. ‘May I not have one ornamental one?’ said a brother when a third sister was about to devote herself to obtaining certificates for mathematics.

Nine ladies, including Miss Emily Davies, Miss Buss, and Miss Beale, were asked to give evidence before the Commission. Miss Beale’s, which was taken in 1865, is of double interest, at once touching the state of girls’ education in general, and the advance being made in the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. She took with her a hundred entrance examination papers arranged in order for inspection. Actuated perhaps by the marvellous carefulness which lost nothing, and seeing a use even in what would often be considered waste papers, as well as by the definite aim of preserving a record of progress, she had kept all the answers written by her pupils to entrance examination questions. With the College papers, she showed also some written by children in one of the national schools at Cheltenham, in order that the Commissioners might make a comparison for themselves.

On being questioned, Miss Beale explained in detail the whole system of the College, interesting the Commissioners in the method of teaching Euclid, one which at some points antedated by many years the present teaching of geometry in the public schools, and which has lately been adopted by the universities. At a time when schoolboys were learning Euclid by heart, Miss Beale was teaching it to girls by a method of explanation which they had to follow and finally reproduce without any learning by rote.

With regard to the teaching of Holy Scripture she said, ‘Each class teacher takes her own class, and that, I think, very important’; but on this subject little was said.

On the question of discipline and moral difficulties she explained that the government of the College was chiefly by personal influence, and that her plan was to make use of very simple means, such as changing the seat of a child who was suspected of being dishonest in her work. ‘It is a small thing, but it indicates want of trust, and it is by small things we govern.’ Such discipline obviously appeared slight to Dr. Storrar, who asked on hearing it, ‘Perhaps girls are more sensitive than boys in such matters?’ ‘I will not attempt to decide,’ replied Miss Beale, ‘but my opinion is that they are not.’

Asked her opinion on a system of examination, Miss Beale recommended a general Board for the examination of teachers, to be founded with national sanction, and an inspection of the schools under the management of those who had passed the examination. ‘There is one other point,’ she added: ‘the cause might be helped on by the establishment of a model school for the training of teachers; I hardly know how such would work.’

The evidence of the Commission, published in 1868, produced a great impression on Mrs. William Grey and her sister, Miss Shireff. Under their able leadership there was formed, in 1871, ‘The National Union for Improving the Education of Women,’ for the purpose of organising effort and helping to create a sounder public opinion with regard to education itself. The work of this society led two years later to the foundation of the Girls’ Public Day-School Company. By this agency, which was commercial as well as educational, High Schools were established in most of the important towns of England. There followed the numerous independent efforts and companies which have covered the country with a network of secondary schools for girls. In 1872, Miss Buss giving up her private property in her very successful school, by an act of self-sacrifice and generosity made it a public school by placing it in trust. A lower school was also established in Camden Town under the same management.

Miss Emily Davies also found her work aided by the Commission. She was largely instrumental in the opening of Local Examinations to girls. The foundation of the first women’s college at a university was laid by her when, in 1873, the college she had opened at Hitchin four years earlier was removed to Cambridge, where it became known as Girton. This step was perhaps even less of a venture, though more startling to the public mind, than the first beginning at Hitchin. Of this Miss Maria Hackett had written to Miss Beale:—

‘The proposed Foundation of a College for the Superior Education of Women is another most important measure in the same direction. I had much correspondence about twenty years ago, with your dear father, Mr. Mackenzie, and Mr. Storrs, on the subject, but I did not venture upon so extensive a scheme.’

Public examinations for girls necessarily followed the work of the Commission, the opening of women’s colleges, and the establishment of public schools for girls. Head-mistresses were called upon to face all the difficulties and drawbacks of these, as well as to accept their advantages, and in some cases also to incur odium, as they worked with measures which they knew to be not in themselves the best, but only the best attainable. Miss Beale had her own vision of what a public examination for girls should be. She had said at Bristol in 1865 that parents

‘are afraid of popular outcry, afraid that their children should take a low place, forgetting that (if the examination be conducted without any of the improper excitement of publicity), it is also a test and means of moral training, since those who work from the right motives simply do their best and are not overanxious about results. I do not desire that there should be a system of competitive examinations, but a general testing of the work done, and if this cannot be responded to in a quiet, lady-like manner, it does not speak well for the moral training of the school.’

She had also said:—

‘I do not think the plan for admitting girls to the same examination with boys in the University local examinations a wise one; the subjects seem to me in many respects unsuited for girls, and such an examination as the one proposed is likely to further a spirit of rivalry most undesirable. I should much regret that the desire of distinction should be made in any degree a prime motive, for we should ever remember that moral training is the end, education the means. The habits of obedience to duty, of self-restraint, which the process of acquiring knowledge induces, the humility which a thoughtful and comprehensive study of the great works in literature and science tends to produce, these we would specially cultivate in a woman, that she may wear the true woman’s ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. As for the pretentiousness and conceit which are associated with the name of “blue-stocking,” and which some people fancy to be the result of education, they are only an evidence of shallowness and vulgarity; we meet with the same thing in the dogmatic conceit of the so-called “self-educated man,” who has picked up learning, but has not had the benefit of a systematic training and a liberal education.’

The formal admission of girls to the Cambridge Local Examinations took place in 1865, though they had been informally accepted as candidates as early as 1863. Miss Beale did not accept the examination at Cheltenham, mainly because its arrangements did not fall in with those of the College year; but she closely observed its working, noted each set of questions and reports, recognising that with these examinations new impetus had been given to the progress of education. She wrote and spoke on the subject, holding it to be the duty of the teacher to seek to guide this movement, which must increasingly affect girls’ schools.

The following extract from one of her papers is chosen because of its bearing on the larger and still unanswered question of university degrees:—

‘Examiners must be prepared not to domineer but to learn that the art is yet in its infancy, and their knowledge of what girls can or ought to do is at present very slight. They must be ready to admit the possibility of a teacher knowing better than his judges. The latter are sometimes tempted to exclaim, Quis custodiat ipsos custodes? If the school curriculum and the examinations are so far out of harmony that a large amount of special preparation is required, either the curriculum is at fault or the examination an evil.... I know that some make a great point of having the actual University examinations opened, because a mere “women’s examination” is spoken of contemptuously. I believe that in trying to avoid this, we should encounter greater evils, and that the wish is connected with a misplaced reverence which many women entertain for the learning of a “pass man.”’

After some years of consideration a decision was practically forced upon Miss Beale. She must choose for her clever girls either to pass a public examination which she thought more suited for men, or to fall behind in a path which was surely leading in the right direction. She did not hesitate, but saw that on this, as on many occasions, it must be her part to labour to remove obstructions, to overcome obstacles.

In her interview with the Commissioners, on being asked if she would approve of the establishment of a special examination for ladies up to the standard of attainment of the London matriculation, she had replied, ‘Certainly,’ but advocated that it should be made possible for women to take German instead of Greek. This examination, she agreed, might be taken as a measure, though the measure might not be filled with the same subjects as for men. She was soon called upon to act in this matter, for in 1869 it was opened to women, and the University of Cambridge also instituted an examination for women over eighteen years of age.

Miss Beale accepted both for the College, but for some years there was no regular organisation of work for those who were taking the Cambridge examination. This was partly due to the higher limit of age. It was then thought extraordinary that girls should stay at school after they were eighteen. It was difficult to persuade many to do so. Some were ‘wanted at home,’ some wished to ‘come out’; those who were intending to be teachers thought they should be already earning. Then the absorbing work for the London examination made it difficult to arrange for much of a wholly different character. Consequently, at first, the older pupils and the young teachers who sought to pass the Cambridge examination had to look after themselves a good deal. Miss Beale would certainly not consider this a drawback. They had the additional advantage of lectures from herself on literature and history.

The ‘London’ must have seemed better worth while for many reasons. It might prove a first step to a definite degree. The degree examinations were not opened till ten years later, and might not have followed at all had zeal and courage not been shown by women over the matriculation. Again, the matriculation certificate enabled men to offer themselves as candidates for further examination with a view to certain careers, such as the medical profession. This would hold good for women. For it had the real advantage of being a recognised standard, while a certificate for an examination arranged specially for women would be like ‘foreign coin.’

One cannot too much admire the qualities which bore teacher and pupils up that steep initial step of the London examination; for steep it was. At that time it demanded a certain knowledge of subjects which were generally regarded as the prerogative of men. Hardly any of the girls who hoped to pass in them had, when they began their special preparation six terms before the examination, learned any Latin, chemistry, geometry, algebra, or natural philosophy—this last being a term which embraced some acquaintance with optics, statics, dynamics, and hydrostatics. Little more than the rudiments of these new subjects had to be mastered, for the examination at that time required ‘a collection of minima, a smattering of everything, enforced with Procrustean rigour on Philistine lines.’ Primarily designed for boys with a grammar-school education, the Latin paper included some knowledge of Horace. It is scarcely necessary to say that disappointment as well as hope was woven into the strand of these brave beginnings. Many failed. Some who were not really equal to the work were persuaded to enter. Some who passed, complained that they could not retain knowledge which had been acquired too rapidly and not assimilated. Not avowedly, not ever consciously to herself—her sense of responsibility for the individual was too great for that, and she reckoned the training of value even if there were no success at the end—but in actual fact, the failures were accepted by Dorothea Beale as a necessary complement of victory to be.

‘Let the victors when they come,

When the forts of folly fall,

Find thy body by the wall!’

All the weakness of the position was known to her. And she showed not only courage and daring, but patience and humility still harder to practise. On one occasion, after a specially difficult Latin paper, which had proved too much for many examinees, she wrote to another head-mistress whose disappointment was as keen as her own:—

‘The more I reflect, the more I think any protest unadvisable. No doubt some have passed (even in Class I.) in former years, who were worse in Latin than one at least who has failed this time. But then there are many things that may be urged. Perhaps the good have not done themselves justice, and the bad more than justice. Besides, I cannot myself, even in looking over one set of papers, unless I correct all at a sitting, mark them fairly even to my own mind; how much more difficult it must be when the examiners change, and the papers come in after a year’s interval. We, by submitting ourselves to examination, pledge ourselves in some sort to be content. It will never do, in my opinion, to impugn the justice of a University, and I really think they will do justice. Any expression of discontent would tend to throw back the granting of degrees. I believe the unification is more likely to take place soon, if we are patient. Remember, too, the decision has not been that of one individual examiner, but has been in some sort confirmed by the Senate.

‘My impression is that the papers will be very carefully set next year, and that we must bear our disappointment this year as well as we can. I am very sorry you feel it so much. Your candidates have done so well in other subjects, that if they should try again next year, you might be certain of a large measure of success, and then a protest, or any remarks from us would tell so much more. I certainly do not mean to send in a large number, but I am pledged to a few, and to those who failed, if they like to go in again.’

This conclusion showed special insight, willingness to bear, and readiness to learn; for the Latin paper was a far more real test of knowledge than any of the others. To have complained of it might have been to acknowledge inferiority which did not seek improvement. And looking back, it may be seen that the failures and mistakes were not of much moment. The real importance and the real triumph lay with the aim and effort. Miss Beale early foresaw what has been literally fulfilled.

‘It is clear,’ she said, ‘that it will before long be impossible in England, as it is now on the Continent, for any one to obtain employment as a teacher without some such attestation,’ i.e. as a certificate. If she could help it, Miss Beale would not let girls who were intending to teach, pass from her without one; she persuaded the pupil, she reasoned with the parent, she frequently mastered both; she silently bore contradiction and misconception. She refused to be thwarted by any obstacle, much as she might wish to change it—such as the time of year at which it was held, the difficulty of sending candidates to London, or by any hesitation on her own part. She might write to a newspaper, ‘it is to some extent an open question what education is most suitable for girls,’ but she inspired her class to prepare for ‘the London’ with zealous drudgery and in the power of self-denial, as the best they could do to fit themselves for work.

Yet the College list of successes was from the first good. In 1869, the first year of examination, eight in all England went in for the matriculation examination, and six failed. The only candidate from Cheltenham passed. This was Miss Susan Wood. In the next year, of the three who passed from Cheltenham one was the famous Greek scholar, Miss Jane Harrison, another bore the name—so dear to its generation—of Marian Belcher.

There was plenty of criticism. There were many to repeat the old complaint that women were being unfitted for their proper duties. It was Miss Beale’s delight to show that those who did well in examinations could also excel in domestic duties. She would tell how one successful candidate of the London examination proved first a helpful sister, then a devoted wife and mother. She would show with pride a letter she received from one of whose ability and success she had great reason to be proud, signed ‘Yours in flour and dripping.’

It may be mentioned here that there is a home distinction connected with the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. In 1868 it was resolved at an annual general meeting that pupils who reached a certain specified standard in the College examinations, and whose general conduct was approved, should be entitled to receive certificates. The first certificates under this resolution were awarded in 1869 to four pupils. In 1875 it was resolved at a Council meeting that those who obtained the College certificate should be entitled Associates of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. These associates are, with the consent of the Lady Principal, allowed to attend any ordinary classes of the College without the payment of fees.

Following hard upon the introduction of public examinations for girls came the cry of overwork. There was some reason in it; but it was much, very much due to timidity and want of knowledge, as well as to exaggeration. It is not necessary to repeat here the evidence which Miss Beale began to collect even before she was a teacher herself, and to which she was ever adding, to the effect that idleness and ennui have more and sadder victims than even misdirected energy and overwork. A healthy prejudice against an empty, self-centred life is steadily growing. The movement which its followers have named Christian Science—also that which is preferably called Faith Healing—daily bring to light instances of self-destruction caused by the slothful mind and unruled will. None the less, the cry of overwork was not an empty one. When first girls began to work for examinations, it was not known how much or how little they could do. Miss Beale’s own opinions upon this, as put before the Commission, were quite tentative. Clever teachers did not always allow for slower-moving brains than their own. Nor was the difference of temperament sufficiently observed and considered. The eager and artistic mind would feel strain and fatigue where one less delicately balanced might toil unwearied. It was not recognised how willing girls are to be pressed, how eager they are to please, how unreasonable they often are in their own arrangements for work, or how easy it is for them to fall into the insincerity of making protracted hours of reading take the place of concentrated mental effort. Head-mistresses and others who had mastered difficulties alone, and who still carefully prepared every lesson they gave, in spite of the pressure of daily affairs, had to learn to reckon with these drawbacks. Examinations when first introduced must from their very novelty have been a great anxiety to both teachers and pupils. The best way of working for them and of resting before them had to be discovered by experience. The pressure was less obvious with those actually first in the field, as they would naturally be all of good ability. The danger began when girls of smaller brain-power and equal ambition, but ignorant of their limitations, dared to follow.

Complaints of overwork came often from homes where there was little cultivation or regard for the things of the mind. Girls who could produce, in what they called their ‘notes of lectures,’ statements concerning ‘heroic cutlets’[44] and ‘Lincoln’s hotel’[45] had not, it may be well understood, much intellectual background. Yet the wholly unfounded complaints of the parents of such pupils would receive public attention that was little deserved. There were others, whose parents would have had them play a pretty part in home life in the afternoon and evening, but who naturally did not find enough time for lessons unless they sat up late or slurred them over. As it was never Miss Beale’s intention that day-pupils should consider themselves to be anything but ‘in the schoolroom,’ the home work was not arranged to allow time for more than the necessary walk or recreation.

The question of overwork is one that still agitates the scholastic world. The real difficulty, at Cheltenham as elsewhere, is not with the schoolgirl whose life is under supervision, but with the young teachers and the elder pupils who have the management of their own time and health, and have not yet learned their own limitations, or acquired a due measure of self-control.

During the early period of the history of the College, Miss Beale came in contact with minds and ideas outside her own school, chiefly by means of the Schools’ Inquiry Commission, and the matter of public examinations. Those who wished had the opportunity of learning her views through her magazine articles and the pamphlets which she began at this time to publish. The most notable of these was ‘The Address to Parents.’ Much of this valuable little paper—one which in her early years as head-mistress made Miss Beale’s ideas widely known among those who cared for real education—had been anticipated in her address to the Social Science Congress in 1865. Then she pleaded the cause of day-schools, urging for them that they offered a training which did not separate children from the influence of home.

‘Of course when children are educated at home, and an anxious mother daily sees and suffers from her children’s faults of temper and disposition, she will be tempted to think that she had better give up the training into other hands, and send them away. Doubtless this is sometimes wise, often unavoidable; but how frequently without necessity is the burden of parental responsibility temporarily cast aside, only to press with tenfold weight in later years. How many parents have learned bitterly to regret that they removed a daughter from the divinely appointed influences of home, and severed by long separation those bonds of affection which might have checked the young in the hour of temptation, and been the support and comfort of their own declining years.’

In 1869, in another address to the same Society, Miss Beale unfolded for the first time her ideas of the help which should be given to girls who were in need of education they could not afford, more especially to those who wished to prepare for a life of teaching. ‘I propose,’ she said, ‘the foundation of a new Benevolent Society, which shall be distinguished from other societies by its rigid adherence to the principle of giving nothing away.’ Instead of gifts, she suggested yearly loans of money, for the use of which an exact account and report of work done should be rendered. This Society has never been founded, but the work Dorothea Beale wished it should do was carried on by herself, quietly and thriftily, but with ever-widening operations, to the day of her death.

At one other point did Miss Beale at this period touch opinion outside her own sphere. This was by writing for the Kensington Society,—a little semi-educational association which during its short life included many names of women who were in their day leaders in philanthropic work and thought. The topics on which its members wrote or deliberated were such as these:—

17 Cunningham Place, London, N.W., November 15, 1865.

The Kensington Society.

1. What are the limitations within which it is desirable to exercise personal influence?

2. What are the evils attendant upon philanthropic efforts among the poor, and how may they be avoided?

3. How does the cultivation of artistic taste affect the wellbeing of society?

Meanwhile the general work of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, was going on quietly and steadily, developing in every best way. The valuable time of the Principal was no longer taken up with the superintendence of lessons and chaperoning music pupils. A larger and gradually improving staff enabled her to arrange her own work so that it might be of the greatest service to the College. But her increasing interest in education at large, her ever-growing sense of having a special place in a large movement, were never allowed to distract her mind from the work of the hour. Rather, she used them as an inspiration for daily drudgery.

The preparation of lessons, the minute and careful correction of notes of lectures,—monotonous work which demands a continuous strain of attention, went on week by week. By means of this quiet, diligent toil she and her fellow-workers were building the real College, of which the fine structure whose first edition was opened in 1873 is but a sign and a symbol.

CHAPTER VIII
ORGANISATION

‘Shepherds of the people had need know the Calendar of Tempests in the State; which are commonly greatest when things grow to equality, as natural tempests about the equinoctia.’—Bacon.

‘With no feeling of exultation should we meet to-day, my children. Those of us who have long laboured at the work are indeed grateful that we have been permitted to see its accomplishment, but we are also deeply sensible that every increase of influence means an increase of responsibility;—that he who had five talents was required to bring other five. With larger numbers there is a stronger sense that we are a collective power for good or evil. And shall we doubt which is stronger? We dare not be so faithless. There is such a mighty prevailing power in the spirit of earnest devotion, that when only two or three are gathered together in His Name, for work as well as for prayer, His power is felt. What a power might we be for good if we were His disciples indeed.

‘Some say our school is Church-like. I am glad, for Churches are built to remind us that God is not far away, but very near to us, and this is the thought which should keep us from evil and fill us with gladness. May His Presence be seen in this house, seen in the lives and hearts of His children: May they remember that they, too, form one spiritual building. As each stone stands here in its appointed place, resting on one stone, supporting others; so are we a little community, a spiritual building; each is placed in her own niche, each has her appointed place, appointed by the Spiritual Architect; each is needful for the perfection of His design.

‘May we ever form part of that spiritual building, whose foundations are laid in faith and obedience. “Whoso heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, he is like a man who laid the foundation and digged deep, and built his house upon a rock.” St. John wished for one of his converts that he might “prosper even as his soul prospered.” Let us desire only such prosperity. Let us ask for true wisdom, for lowliness of heart, that we may esteem others better than ourselves. Let us ask, above all, for that most excellent gift of charity, without which all else is as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. Something of this spirit of love for one another does live among us, as we see by those who have come to join their prayers with ours to-day. I would ask them not to forget us afterwards, but to remember us when they return to their homes; and I would fain hope that this bond will last through coming years, and that the College, though transplanted to a new place, will always be to you “the old College.”’

In these words the Lady Principal addressed her staff, pupils, and a small sprinkling of friends on the first morning of assembling in the new building which, begun in January of previous year, was thus opened on March 17, 1873. As the school hours ended on Saturday the 15th, a simple order had been given to take home all the books, and to bring them to the new College at the usual time on Monday. In the course of the afternoon all desks and portable fittings were moved and arranged in order for work. The appointment of places in the new hall was, so far as can be remembered, a matter of a few minutes only, so quiet and free from fuss was all College organisation. There was certainly not half an hour of the ordinary lesson time lost. Yet it was a change which made an undying impression. The quietness with which it came was wholly in accordance with the spirit of the school. The regular work, undisturbed even for an hour by the totally new surroundings, spoke emphatically of the response of duty to every fresh inspiration and larger freedom.

And how beautiful those new surroundings seemed to the hundred and fifty girls who were privileged to experience the change from the square, unadorned rooms of Cambray House. Two churches at that time, one with its high, fine spire, another with its lavish decoration, were all that the town could show of the Gothic Renaissance which followed the teachings of Ruskin and Morris. The Ladies’ College was early among non-ecclesiastical buildings of this type. To some it may have seemed florid, but not to the eyes of youth and hope, which took delight in the pierced and patterned stone, the flowers in the coloured glass, the arch of the windows, the unusual design of the lecture-rooms. These caused teachers and pupils to ignore for the most part the undoubted chilliness of the new rooms, and the ‘currents of air,’ about which some parents wrote complaining letters, for at that time people were even more afraid of draughts than they are to-day. It is worth mentioning, as characteristic of Miss Beale’s mind, that she forgot very soon the exact date of entrance into the new College; though when reminded of it each year by her own birthday, or by the approach of spring and Lady Day, she would on some suitable March morning say a few words at prayers: ‘It is —— years to-day since we entered,’ etc.

In 1873 the building was but begun. It is a question if Miss Beale herself dreamed of all that was to follow. There was as yet no house for the Lady Principal, and for a year, while it was being built, she lived with Mrs. Fraser, who had one of the three boarding-houses then existing. The house completed in 1874, there followed in 1875 the first enlargement of the College, the two hundred and twenty pupils for whom it was first designed having rapidly become three hundred. At this time a second large hall and more classrooms were added. In seven years the College had doubled its numbers; hence in 1882 were built the art and music wings and the kindergarten rooms, to be followed almost immediately by science rooms and laboratories. After this the sound of the hammer was not heard for nearly four years; but it is one which has a resounding echo in the memories of College life. There were a few peaceful half-hours when it was stopped for Scripture lessons, at all other times it was but a too persistent reminder of prosperity and growth. A memory also abides of crowded doorways and passages, overfull lecture-rooms, and a continual looking forward to the increased accommodation which each new enlargement would give.

This constant expansion as funds permitted was entirely after Miss Beale’s heart. In 1891 she wrote to Miss Arnold:—

‘Yes, I do hope you will build, a good building is the best investment for money, if you have it. Let it be done gradually, as ours was. Plan for more than you can do at first, and build only what you can afford at the time. Don’t beg: it is much better to earn one’s living.’

Strange as it may appear, the building of a fit home for the College had not taken place without opposition. Miss Beale relates in her History that after the site for it had been purchased, the annual general meeting of proprietors in 1871 voted by a majority interested in the Cambray property that it should be re-sold. Dr. Jex-Blake, the Principal of the Cheltenham College, and a member of the Ladies’ College Council, came to the rescue, and in a special meeting of the same year spoke earnestly in support of the plan for building. ‘Teachers so able and energetic and successful have a right to the greatest consideration, and the very best arrangements for teaching. A Ladies’ College so distinguished, second to none in England, has a right to every advantage that can be secured for it, a right to be lodged in a building of its own, a building perfect in its internal arrangements, and outwardly of some architectural attractiveness; one that should be a College, and should look like a College. It is quite right to say, “Let well alone,” but that does not involve letting ill alone. The College has achieved brilliant success, but that was not due to its having been cramped for room; and when no longer cramped, its success will be greater.’ The resolution of the earlier meeting was rescinded by fifty-nine votes to nine, and two months later a contract was accepted for building from Mr. John Middleton’s design. The site, for which £800 was given, was a part of the old Well Walk where, between their glasses, George the Third and other famous water-drinkers had once taken their daily constitutional.

In the matter of the building, Miss Beale had a struggle to get her bold and comprehensive ideas carried out, but eventually she won the day. It was hard for her, at the very moment when she seemed about to realise her dreams for the expansion of the work of the College, to receive orders which she felt to be new limitations. She had constantly to explain her reasons and requirements to those who had a deep interest in the welfare of the school, but who had not also the knowledge needed for arrangements which Miss Beale felt and intended should be in the hands of the Principal alone. The following letter which she wrote to a member of the Council suggests some of her difficulties, and also her method of skilfully and apparently accidentally stating the inconvenience or disaster which would ensue if another arrangement than her own were adopted:—

‘I have drawn up a ground-plan and tables, by the help of which I hope I may succeed in making clear to you the impossibility of conducting the College without the use of four class-rooms. I have never in the slightest degree departed from my original intention. Time-tables, classes, teachers, furniture, and building were all arranged to harmonise. It never occurred to me that any one would wish to interfere in the internal management, as it had never been done during the fifteen years I have been here. Great, therefore, was my surprise to receive a letter saying,—“I have had strict injunctions not to have desks put back into room 2.” If it is thought well to reduce the number of pupils, it can be done after Midsummer but not now, and to give up two class-rooms we must reduce our numbers not by twenty, but by fifty, i.e. by two whole classes. Our Hall is only ten feet longer than that in Cambray, and we then had the use of four class-rooms and one supplementary room, besides that assigned to Drawing and Callisthenics. With fifty additional pupils we cannot do with less, even though the class-rooms are larger. It is not impossible to teach a class sitting on chairs, I should not, therefore, insist on having desks, but they will certainly be much more convenient, and much more sightly; chairs will always look untidy. The desks I have match the furniture, the room was built to fit them, for examinations. I am therefore unwilling to have them sold for nothing. It is certainly necessary for the well-being of the College that the internal arrangements should be in the hands of one person; if this is not done, I can only foresee the occurrence of such disasters as we are familiar with, when the Head Master of a public school is interfered with by those who cannot see the daily working, and know all the complications.’

The new building was not the only cause of difference. The Lady Principal, with her advanced ideas on women’s examinations, her desire to help teachers, to increase the number of the pupils, seemed to some members of the Council to be pushing the work into other fields than those for which it was intended when first the Proprietary College for Ladies was founded. ‘Local interest,’ a term not ominous of good in the ears of great educators, demanded a good day-school for the daughters of gentlemen, and nothing more. Some felt that, in the pursuit of mathematical and scientific attainments for which special teachers and classrooms were required, accomplishments such as drawing and painting would be neglected. Some, who had watched the growth of the infant College, and looked upon it almost as their own, interfered in small ways, as in the arrangements of seats and rooms. The gossip mentioned already was at its height during the first year in the new College, and Miss Beale thought that it might have been prevented or much minimised had all connected followed her counsel of perfection by being superior to town talk.

More than all she felt the need of a larger outlook. The Council should in her view include some members whose personal acquaintance with the College and the needs of the town would give them a special interest in it; but she desired to unite with these men and women of intellectual power and large views whose experience would rank them among educationists. And for the management of the boarding-houses, which were now becoming each year a more important element in the College life, opinion which could be untouched by local prejudices was needed.

Some of the anxieties of this time were expressed by Miss Beale in a paper which she may have thought of reading to the Council. It began thus:—

‘Until we moved into the new College a year ago, I had been singularly free from interference. The lesson learned when Miss Procter resigned and our College was nearly wrecked, had not been forgotten. Besides, we were poor, so there was little to quarrel about. With the removal to Bays Hill our real difficulties began. I had drawn the ground-plan with the greatest regard to economy of space. I was told the porch must not be used for entrance, and I was obliged to show we could not do without it.... Then I was asked to do with two instead of four or five lecture-rooms, and so on. I was obliged to prepare elaborate documents with ground-plans, etc., ere I could get leave to use the space provided, and without which the College could not be carried on.’

There were perhaps others who cared for the College, who realised no less strongly than Miss Beale the advantage it would be to bring on to the Council those who were less interested in it as a local institution than as one of educational value for the country at large, but it was she who undoubtedly took the lead in the steps made to this end. In this she showed courage, for even those members of the Council who best understood her views hesitated to support them, fearing an abrupt change which would do more harm than good. They wrote to caution her:—

‘You must not expect men of Mr. Lowe’s mark to work on the C.L.C. Council; and you must not expect to see all go as you would wish at the meeting. You will find no member of Council but myself anxious to increase the powers of the Lady Principal, and probably they will not be much increased. And if you secure the majority of Council being non-local, which will be hard to secure, you will not secure their attendance at meetings held out of London.

‘And to get a satisfactory List to propose to Shareholders will be hard, for the best-known men in England will not join; and those who will join will not command votes largely; and so I advise moderation. I did my best at this last Council meeting to prepare the way for a “bloodless revolution” or quiet transition ... and I have seen Mr. Verrall. He is very friendly to you and to the College, and is a man of very good judgment as well as energy, and you are safe in talking or writing to him. For myself I feel less and less inclined to advise strong measures; and I do not see my way to getting the College on as broad a basis as I think it should stand on.... I advise you to think well and long before you get into an inextricable difficulty; and I think you will find your best friend and best support in one who for fifteen years (or nearly) has given much time and thought to the College, Mr. Brancker.

‘At the last Council meeting you showed great wisdom in accepting the adverse Resolution with equanimity.’

Differences of this kind pointed to a change of administration. As early as 1865, in her address at Bristol, Miss Beale had pointed out the difficulties besetting a school organised on the lines of Cheltenham:—

‘The machinery of proprietary colleges is somewhat complicated, and it is liable to get out of order. Thus, for example, if the shareholders agitate when a measure does not at once commend itself to their judgment, they may interfere with the efficiency, and endanger the existence of the institution. Secondly, none must attempt to carry out reforms in education, unless they have faith enough in their own system to work on quietly for a time, in the face of popular opposition, and unless they have a capital to fall back upon.’

Union for the general good—a single purpose in Principal, Council, shareholders alike—this alone could prevent all serious and hindering differences of opinion among them. It was for this union Miss Beale was specially striving now. Her paper to the Council went on thus:—

‘ ... I should like this and other matters fixed, not in reference to my personal wishes, but according to what the most experienced persons think best. I shall see the Heads of all the principal Girls’ Schools probably when I am in London, and probably also an Endowed Schools’ Committee, and I shall learn from Mrs. William Grey what has been done at the Board of the Girls’ Day School Company; perhaps this may modify my views. Meanwhile I enclose a few suggestions I sent to Mr. Verrall.... I feel very strongly with you that if the College is at all to go on doing good work, it must not be governed by local members, and that it is a matter of the greatest importance that we should have upon our Board men of experience and judgment in educational matters. I would not keep more than two or three members of the present Council. It should be made a rule that no person who derives pecuniary profit, either directly or indirectly, should be a member of it. The point on which I feel most strongly just now is that the Principal must be able to select her fellow-workers, to appoint and dismiss.’

There is also an interesting letter to Mr. Verrall on the subject of her authority:—

‘Of course, you are more likely than I am to know what is best in matters of government, still I think it may be well to express, as clearly as I can, what I feel in reference to the subject of my authority.

‘It does not seem to me as if things would be likely to go on long without revolutions in an institution governed by two irresponsible powers. The authority of an irresponsible Principal must of course be checked in some way, if not by constitutional means, then by a Russian system. It may be that the Czarina has been trying to carry out some good reforms, but if her plans differ from those of the Councillors, there is an end of them. Our present Councillors are now afraid of being in their turn made an end of by a shareholders’ meeting, but if the constitution, as I understood it, were carried, the shareholders would be powerless, and the Council might, for mere personal dislike, get rid of a Principal who opposed what was wrong. Of course, it will not do for a Committee to interfere with the Principal’s choice of teachers, and there will be anarchy unless she has the power of dismissal; but virtually there will always be a power of appeal to the Committee inasmuch as they would, if partisans of any official, dismiss the Principal to reinstate her.’

Many members of the College Council desired change and enlargement. One wrote: ‘I cannot think it right to leave Miss Beale or any other Lady Principal to the mercies of a purely local Council ... for I think with such a Council no good Lady Principal could long agree.’

Among those whom Miss Beale consulted at this crisis, and from whom she received sympathy, were Dr. Jex-Blake, then head-master of Rugby, and Sir Joshua Fitch, who later on became a member of the Council.

The desired reform was brought about in 1875, when at a general meeting in March the relative powers of the proprietors, Council, and Principal were more clearly defined and the number of the governing body increased. The Council then elected consisted of the following:—

Life Members

The Right Hon. Earl Granville, K.G., D.C.L., F.R.S., Chancellor of the University of London.

The Right Hon. Lord Lyttelton.

The Right Hon. Sir Edward Ryan, M.A., F.R.S.

J. Storrar, Esq., M.D., Chairman of Convocation of the University of London.

The Rev. H. Walford Bellairs, Rector of Nuneaton.

The Rev. Canon Barry, Principal of King’s College, London.

Miss Buss, Principal of the North London Collegiate School for Girls.

W. Dunn, Esq., Cheltenham.

H. Verrall, Esq., Brighton.

T. Marriott, Esq., Victoria Street, Westminster.

S. S. Johnson, Esq., Nottingham.

Ordinary Members

The Rev. Herbert Kynaston, Principal of the Cheltenham College.

The Rev. W. Wilberforce Gedge, Malvern Wells.

The Rev. Dr. Morton Brown, Cheltenham.

E. T. Wilson, Esq., M.B. (Oxon.), Cheltenham.

General M’Causland, Cheltenham.

F. D. Longe, Esq., Cheltenham.

John Middleton, Esq., Cheltenham.

T. Morley Rooke, Esq., M.D. (London), Cheltenham.

Miss Mary Gurney, London.

Miss Lucy March Phillipps, Cheltenham.

Mrs. James Owen, Cheltenham.

Miss Catherine Winkworth, Clifton.

Much was gained by this remodelling, but the period of uneasy development was not yet over. One annual meeting which discussed the constitution of the College appears in private notes made by the Principal for her History as ‘Bear Garden.’ Reorganisation was seen to be essential. The College, founded in 1853 as a voluntary association, had by 1880 grown far beyond the calculations of its founders. Besides the school buildings and the Lady Principal’s house, it possessed Fauconberg House and the sanatorium at Leckhampton. To give it a safe legal foundation it was therefore registered ‘with limited liability’ under the Companies’ Acts of 1862 and 1867, without the addition of the word ‘limited’ to its name. New regulations concerning the holding of shares and property—the appointment of officers—were also made.

‘The Shareholders formally renounced all interest on their shares, and on January 31, 1880, the College was duly incorporated. On May 1 of the same year, the Lady Principal and other officials were formally re-elected.

‘The new Constitution provided for a Governing Body of twenty-four Members, of whom eighteen, namely twelve men and six women, were to be Members elected by the Shareholders, and the remaining six Representative Members, each holding office for six years. The six Representative Members were to be appointed by: (1) The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol; (2) The Hebdomadal Council of the University of Oxford; (3) The Council of the Senate of the University of Cambridge; (4) The Senate of the University of London; (5) The Lady Principal; and (6) The Teachers.

Miss Beale did not often speak of the difficulties which necessarily she had to meet, as one called upon to direct the development of a great institution. But she had counsel and sympathy for those who were similarly placed. Miss Buss wrote thus to Miss Ridley of help she obtained from her:—

‘I had a long and grave talk to Miss Beale, who counsels fight, but not on any personal ground. She says, “Resign, if there is interference with the mistress’ liberty of action. That is a public question, and one of public interest.” She was so good and loving; she was so tender; and she is so wise and calm. She told me some of her own worries, and said that sometimes she quivered in every nerve at her own Council meetings. People came in and asked for information, involving hours of work for no result; ignored all that had been done, and talked as if they alone had done everything and knew everything. She urged me to try and be impersonal, so to speak; to remember that these and similar difficulties would always occur where there are several people. She said that women were always accused of being too personal, and harm was done by giving a handle to such an assertion.’[46]

The first efforts of the new Council to grapple with their task revealed that one source of difficulty lay in the government of the boarding-houses. The early founders had foreseen this when, in their first prospectus, they announced that they would not be responsible for any houses. Experience, however, soon showed that by this policy, grave dangers were at the same time incurred. Into Miss Beale’s early struggle for pupils the question of boarding-houses scarcely entered, though for the want of them she often had sadly to witness the loss of good pupils to the College. There were among the day-pupils many children of Anglo-Indians in England for a time. On the return of these parents to India, they were forced to make boarding arrangements for the children left behind. It was not till 1864 that the first regularly constituted boarding-house was opened under Miss Caines. This was at 24 Lansdown Place, now joined to No. 25, and known as St. Helen’s. In 1870 Miss Caines removed to Fauconberg House, the first property purchased by the College.

It was only through actual experience that the position of the boarding-house and its head could be defined. In point of fact, this situation had to grow and develop according to the requirements of the College, which as formerly had to constitute precedents and make experiments. It is but seldom that the details of any great scheme can be arranged beforehand with deliberate judgment, that all difficulties can be foreseen, and occasions of conflict avoided. They are more often worked out by single-minded intention which can endure through small errors and trifling disputes. The Lady Principal’s position was rendered more difficult by the tacit opposition of ‘local interest’ to the extension of boarding-house accommodation. The very existence of the College had been for many years precarious. Few people in Cheltenham wished it to become anything more than a suitable day-school for the sisters of boys at the College. Consequently a lady who took boarders was regarded with no special favour, and her actions were very often severely criticised.

In the difficult work of forming and increasing boarding-houses, mistakes were made by many. Miss Beale’s own belief in others, her habit of accepting people at their own estimate, of believing they were what she wished them to be, of judging character from her wide experience of books rather than from that of life, sometimes led her astray in her choice of fellow-workers. She who in her lonely position often felt the need of sympathy, to which she was ever responsive, was anxious to give it, even where she could not understand. This made her slow to bring about a change, lest sufficient opportunity for amendment had not been given. On the other hand, sometimes she could see that a change should be made promptly, but as she could not act alone a dangerous delay would ensue.

At first the position of a head of a boarding-house was little defined, and it was hard sometimes for a clever, well-intentioned woman, anxious to do the best for the children in her care, not to regard the work of the house as primary, that of the College as secondary only. One lady, who was extremely capable and interested in her work, was ambitious to make her boarding-house a complete institution in itself, rather than an integral part of the College. Many of the girls in her charge came as her own relations or friends; she chose to adopt the position that it was right for her to decide whether they should be taught at her house or sent to College, and she denied the right of any one to interfere in her management. She also claimed the right to take another house for herself and her own children, where she could receive and entertain her friends. As soon as Miss Beale’s eyes were opened to the danger of such independent action, she did not hesitate a moment on the right course to be pursued with regard to the boarding-house management. She perceived that in this matter, as in the work of the school, there was no standing ground between obedience and independence. ‘I am so sorry for Miss Beale,’ wrote Mrs. William Grey to Miss Buss, ‘and so glad our Council determined to have nothing to do with Boarding-Houses. I cannot help thinking that the wisest course for the Cheltenham Council would be to wash their hands of them, only reserving to themselves, as we have, the right to refuse pupils from a house they disapprove of. There seems to me no tolerable alternative between this and the hostelry system.’

It may be safely said that never, even in moments of worst annoyance, did Miss Beale ever propose to ‘wash her hands’ of the boarding-houses. She felt they should be ‘organically related’ to the College life, a part of it which she could not do without, one which had in it great possibilities for extending and strengthening the influence of the College teaching, one which, neglected, must be an infinite source of difficulty, by which the standard of the corporate life might be lowered, and its best work hindered.

So she persisted, lending her whole mind and strength to help in the evolution of a system which should be fair to individuals and the best for the College as a body. In 1890, after she had won her point, she wrote to Miss Arnold, then head-mistress of the Truro High School, who had consulted her on the subject:—

‘I think I told you that after many years, I have prevailed on our Council to take the whole risk of the boarding-houses,—the pecuniary risk is of course very great, and in case of war or sudden depression, I don’t exactly see how we should meet it, but one must have risks, and we find the moral risks of not taking pecuniary ones so great that we decided for the latter—and indeed we had to pay pretty considerable sums in law expenses and to get rid of unjust claims too. We could not prove that these ladies had not lost money, if they said they had—and if they were bad managers they did perhaps lose—and an outcry was raised that we ruined poor ladies!’

But the difficulties to be encountered on the way to this consummation were by no means slight, and involved great personal anxiety and pain. It was especially hard to her that she should be known by her own pupils to be in opposition to any who had been set over them. It was hard to feel that many with their partial knowledge of facts must misunderstand her, or childishly attribute her actions to commonplace motives of jealousy and love of power. Some part of these difficulties became fully public in 1882, when the College was involved in a libel case, and a lawsuit which was settled by arbitration. Exoneration from all blame followed in both instances. In the arbitration case the judgment was delivered by Mr. Justice Charles, and placed in a sealed envelope with the injunction that either party might open it on payment of £350. The Council did not think it necessary to pay this money. Eventually those who had brought the action against the College did so, to find that the judgment had been pronounced against them on every count. It was a victory for the College and the Principal, but it had not been achieved without great toil and suffering on Miss Beale’s part. She dreaded the cross-examination with all the nervousness of a sensitive nature. Speaking of it afterwards, and of all it had cost her, she ever associated with the pain the remembrance of the immense help and sympathy she had received from her friend Mrs. James Owen, then a member of the Council, and would say, ‘Mrs. Owen said I should not be scorched in the fire.’ She was also upborne by the loyalty of her fellow-workers, both teachers and boarding-house mistresses, who signed a joint expression of their sympathy with her in her time of anxiety. Miss Buss gave more than words of sympathy, she was present herself in the arbitration-room when the case was tried. When it was over she wrote to her friend to this effect: ‘Yesterday I made the personal acquaintance of Miss ——. I fell in love with her because she is so intensely loyal to Cheltenham and to “dear Miss Beale.” I think if you could have heard her talk, unknown to her, you would have felt that the severe trial you have had to go through was more than compensated for by the love and loyalty it has called out to you and the College.’

The increase in the number of the boarding-houses, with their slightly different characteristics, brought an obvious advantage to the College. It led the way to still cheaper houses, and to the promotion of that work so dear always to Miss Beale, helping poor students and training teachers. Never heartily sympathetic with what is generally called charitable work, afraid of seeing money given without a really equivalent return in usefulness and good work, there was one appeal to which she never turned a deaf ear. Probably she never knew any case of a girl honestly trying to improve herself, and failing in the effort for want of means, without trying to help her. Her usual plan was to advance money, which she found was almost invariably returned to her in the course of time. She would, wherever it seemed right, ask for its return on the ground that it might be of use to others, and because she was ever careful to make those she helped recognise that the possession of money is a stewardship only. But it was offered and lent and sometimes given in such a way that there should be no personal feeling of obligation and debt. ‘There is a loan fund,’ she would say when there occurred a question of the removal of a promising pupil from the College on the score of expense. And hardly any one ever heard her say more than this of the large system of help which she initiated and to a very great extent sustained alone. Some of the boarding-house mistresses generously took one girl free, or for very low terms, but the work was quietly done, known only to few.

The establishment of scholarships did not fit into Miss Beale’s educational schemes. She was not wholly opposed to them. One, in 1870, was accepted for the College, when Colonel Pearce bestowed a gift of £1000 to found the Pearce Scholarship for the daughter of an army officer, and Miss Beale in the last year of her life established one for Casterton. But she had a great horror of a system by which one school or college could buy promising pupils from others, and she held that it was hard on earnest students who were not naturally quick to see assistance given only to ability. ‘I have refused,’ she said at a later period, ‘all scholarships except one, the chief condition of which is poverty. Three scholarships have been offered unasked, and an endowment for two prizes, which would have formed a good advertisement, every year, but I have refused all.’

As the College grew, Miss Beale felt more and more the need of a house where those who were trying to train themselves to be teachers could board inexpensively, and in 1876 was made that beginning which, as she said, was ‘full of blessing to the College, and of much use beyond its bounds.’ This was before the Maria Grey Training College was opened, and when there was no institution at all in which women could receive definite preparation for becoming teachers in secondary schools.

Miss Mary Margaretta Newman, member of a family which had shown itself sympathetic and interested in Miss Beale’s work from the first, offered to take a furnished house for a small number of students, to give her services, and contribute besides £75 a year towards expenses. Miss Newman had seen, whilst helping Miss Selwyn in her school at Sandwell, how much some such assistance was needed; how many girls of good social standing were struggling to obtain the training necessary to fit them to earn their living as teachers. She therefore provided a home for a few, and by her quiet, gentle influence supplemented the College work, and won the affections of her household. ‘What we felt most was the simplicity with which she gave so much. She seemed unconscious that she was doing anything remarkable in going to live in a small house, with one servant, and undertaking all the labour such an economy implied.’[47]

Miss Newman’s work went on for scarcely a year, for at the end of 1877, after a very short illness, aggravated by the burden she had willingly laid upon herself, she died, leaving the work but just begun indeed, yet full of promise, and rendered by her sacrifice and death a sacred charge to the College and the Lady Principal. So indeed Miss Beale felt it to be, and in after years she would remember the life given in the cause she herself had so much at heart, and would write in her diary on December 31: ‘I think of Miss Newman’s death. Shall I not follow her example?’ Then for the first time Miss Beale, who had always maintained and acted on the principle that the College should earn its own living, asked for money to buy and furnish a suitable house for girls who could not afford the terms of the boarding-houses. She could not bear to refuse the many applications she received from those who were too poor to help themselves. About £1200 was immediately collected, one half being contributed by the College staff.

The work thus begun extended so rapidly that in little more than five years it was seen to be necessary that it should have a building of its own, and the trustees who had the management of the funds decided to build a residential College. This was opened under the name of St. Hilda’s in 1885.

The first ten years in the new buildings were a time of larger development for the College than any other in its history. Miss Beale’s own active life was also more full, and not less anxious, than it had ever been. There was never again a time of depression such as the year 1871 had been, when the College seemed to be almost losing ground, when in the whole course of the year only three fresh pupils entered. But the rapid increase on every hand of new, good, cheap schools naturally fed her anxiety at a period when she had to justify to the Council her constant demand for more classrooms, music-rooms, halls, laboratories. She saw the immense importance of keeping ahead in these things. Other schools had endowments or guaranteed capital, the College could only increase and improve its plant out of the fees paid by the pupils. The Lady Principal did not wish it otherwise; but the constant remembrance of this made her very careful in expenditure, and ever desirous that all individual interest should be lost to sight in regard for the common welfare. There was something sharper than anxiety to bear over the boarding-house difficulties and the reconstitution of the Council. So much patience was needed, so much judgment in decisions, in avoiding mistakes, in retrieving them when made, that time and thought might well have been occupied with the care of actualities alone.

Yet it will not be surprising to some to know that it was just in these years that her inner life also became more full and more active, and that she was called upon to go through mental crises of great moment. The habit of prayer, difficult to maintain in a busy life, was strengthened by attendance at Retreats; a practice begun in 1877 to be continued yearly. Reading of every kind, with the exception of fiction, was diligently kept up, and thought was never more active.

The intellectual and spiritual struggles of this time permanently affected Miss Beale’s work and teaching. They cannot be passed over.

CHAPTER IX
DE PROFUNDIS

‘Es sind die, so viel erlitten

Trübsal, Schmerzen, Angst, und Noth,

Im Gebet auch oft gestritten

Mit dem hochgelobten Gott.’

Theodor Schenk.

Dorothea Beale—largely owing to her sensitive nature and high ideals—had had her full share of the sufferings and disappointments of youth. And when she had gained the experience and habits of more mature years, when she had schooled herself to bear, when her position was assured, when she was free to associate largely with those most sympathetic to her, her zeal for the best ever caused a pressing sense of effort and strain. Certain commonplace troubles she had not known, as, for example, the want of money—a need which in fact she never experienced, and never really understood in others. And on the whole her health had been good. She regarded it as one of her first duties to consider this, and except for the fact that she had an inherent indifference to the character of the food she ate, the duty was not neglected. But in 1878 she was called upon to go through a period of weakness and anxiety which limited her powers for the time. In spite of her great self-control she was obliged to relax a little, to take more rest, while the effort to preserve that self-control made her seem, to some who knew nothing of it, hard and unsympathetic. Very little indeed did she say of what she went through at this time, because she thought it best for others that she should be reserved and silent on the subject. The College and Miss Beale seemed to have a stability which could not be touched or changed, and she knew the value of this characteristic to her work. Probably no one in the College, and hardly any one outside it, perhaps none except her sisters and Miss Clarke, knew how near she was at this time to an absolute breakdown. The diary, still persistently kept, continued to be little more than a record of struggle against particular faults; yet here, from an occasional word and expression, the weariness and anxiety of the time may be gauged.

The year opened for Miss Beale with a special renewal of effort. Canon Body’s addresses at a Retreat she attended in Warrington Crescent in the first days of January were full of inspiration to her. This meant actively fresh effort, keener self-scrutiny, more watchfulness. ‘I remember,’ she wrote on January 24, the opening day of College, ‘I remember with grief the many neglects of the past. Forsake me not, neither reward me after my deserts.’

The next few weeks show a pathetic struggle against a growing sense of weakness. At first she blamed herself if duty was neglected, then as she knew herself to be ill, still felt that more might have been done, refusing to take sickness as an excuse. There are many living who were at College at this period, and to them the picture of this effort and suffering going on in the background of all that then seemed unfailingly vital and positive must have a double interest,—increasing tenderness for the memory of her who for their sakes was bearing a daily burden of pain, encouraging to fresh zeal by showing what a brave spirit may do even in weakness and depression. A few extracts to show this follow:—

So ended a term of great anxiety. One medical opinion, doubtless referred to in her diary of March 20, was of such a nature, that Miss Beale thought she must resign her work at once. At Hyde her sisters persuaded her to rest and to see another doctor, who took a more hopeful view, which was wholly justified by her gradual return to health.

Among the few who knew of this sorrow was the old pupil and friend, Miss Margaret Clarke. To her Miss Beale wrote from Hyde before she had received the second medical opinion, and the reply shows, far more than the diary can tell us, how deep was the gloom which hung over her way at this time. It might well have been written three years later, when Miss Beale was called upon to undergo greater suffering than any bodily pain alone can give, and suggests to those who read it now, that the darkness of that later time was shadowing her spirit even as early as this. The interest of it is the greater because it shows another who like Dorothea Beale, while faithful to her work, unsparing in care and thought for her children, had been called upon personally to know spiritual anguish. Such suffering, such loss, such deeper realisation of Divine love as are read in this letter are surely the portion of those who, having given much and helped many, are called to some further work of sympathy, needing perhaps ‘heart’s blood.’

‘My very dear Friend,—Your letter touches me so nearly, and calls out such true sympathy, that I cannot help yielding myself to the impulse to answer you, as one who, by her own experience, knows the pain and suffering you are now passing through. Last year at this time I was in it, and possibly just where you are now, where my complete faith in all that was most dear to me was tested; yes, tested and sifted, till all human longings and cravings, even those the most lawful, were laid low; God Himself seemed to draw near, and strip the soul of all it prized, and was proud of, asking one thing after another of it, and last of all the heart, whole and unshared, until, when Good Friday came, it could sympathise with the Crucified, as it had never done before. Not that all that had not been done before as I believed, but this was in a way deeper, more searching than the soul had yet realised. I do not know if I am making myself clear to you, for it is difficult to put it into words. It was the unlearning human wisdom, and the getting ready to be “a little child,” to learn Divine Wisdom, in the school of the Kingdom of the Incarnate Word.

‘And then, when all was yielded, at least in will, then came a desolation time, which none but those who have passed through it can know—a living death, as it were; the soul having just power to cling to the Invisible Cross, and say the Creed, as a witness perhaps more to itself, that faith was alive, than to God as an act of faith in Him. I never slept, (I was for) whole nights awake, (the) brain always at work trying to solve the difficult problems of God’s wisdom, and circumstances in my own life, and to find out what was right, what was His Will. At last I was given a simple faith blindly to give myself to God for whatever He wished for me. To let go reasonings and what I thought, etc., and say just as a little child “Our Father” with intention for what He willed. I did not know what it might be, but He knew, and I would trust Him, and then I went on to (think of) that seventeenth chapter of St. John, and claimed my share in the benefits of that prayer, in the answer that is ever coming to each separate member of Christ’s Body all along the years since it was prayed.

‘And so, gradually, the passage was made into a nearer region, a nearer relationship to God, if I may so express myself. But I must not go on writing in this way. I can only tell you that what was then only a trembling venture of Faith has become a substantial reality in the life of the soul; the whole being, body, soul and spirit being penetrated by it, and the whole of life transformed by the “sunshine” which makes itself felt, even through stray clouds, which must come sometimes, and there is rest and peace in the soul—divine peace.

‘Forgive me, dear Miss Beale, for writing in a way I scarcely ever do to any one.

‘I know how impossible it will be for you to rest, but do try to do so, as long as you can.’

After the Easter holidays Miss Beale was much better in health, and though her work through the summer was carried on with a good deal of strain and weariness, she was able to do it as fully as usual. The summer holidays were spent partly at Hyde Court with her mother, and partly at Cheltenham, and by the end of them she was much rested and again able to take the walks she enjoyed. The opening day of the autumn term was September 17. ‘Help me not to disgrace my profession!’ she exclaimed in her diary of that day.

Two years after this date Hyde Court ceased to be the regular holiday home, for in November 1881 Mrs. Beale died. In one of her later letters to her ‘Principal’ daughter she had written: ‘I hunger to see you, my darling. You have been so good to me always, your reward will come.’ Such words of praise are dear indeed when the lips that spoke them are cold. They were treasured by Miss Beale. But in this bereavement, as in all times when made conscious of the shadow of death, specially of her own, she tried to face the mystery with clear-sighted gaze, to realise sincerely the impression it was meant to produce. She would not let expressions of comfort and hope, which she welcomed and accepted to the full, or any brightness brought by the kindness of the living, hide for her the penitential aspect of death.

The following fragmentary thoughts seem to come from the very chamber of death, and were written on the day of the month which was to be the date of her own death, twenty-five years later:—

‘November 9, 1881.

‘At first death seemed, as I looked at that pale face, simply terrible—how could I die? This morning I went again and touched the cold hand, and gazed into the face, so calm and wax-like. She who had rejoiced over my birth fifty years ago was now perhaps watching me. Does the spirit linger round its earthly tabernacle for a while? The memory of old times came back—not only the love and unselfishness, but the harshness too, the faults, the sins, I find in myself—surely she feels it now as the light shines on her. Does she not see herself more as God sees her? For every sinful word we shall give account. Surely this sorrow is a purifying fire, and the words are true, if we would judge ourselves here we shall not be judged.

‘Here, where we have partaken together of His Body and Blood, I kneel near that empty tabernacle—but a spiritual Presence is with us—purifying us both and drawing us nearer to Him in Whom living and dead are one.

‘Bless and purify our spirits, O Lord, with the dew of Thy grace, make us gentler and holier. Through the veil we seem to see Thee nearer. Longing, praying that we may not, as the rich man, have to feel the burning shame for our unloving spirit, now that we see His love, His tender, searching eye.

‘It becomes to me a sacred chapel, I can scarcely bear to part. The room is fragrant with the gifts of tender flowers from loving friends, and there is a peace here abiding in the sense of God’s continued, loving, healing discipline. “I change not!”’

During these years outside interests multiplied. New friendships were formed; some old ones were strengthened. The College Magazine, the first definite link forged with old pupils, was begun in 1880. Miss Beale made more acquaintances outside the College. In London she met many who shared her educational interests. In Cheltenham she attended, and often read and spoke at, a small literary gathering called the Society of Friends, which met from time to time at different houses. The diary becomes full of reference to Mrs. Middleton and Mrs. Owen. Through Mrs. Middleton she came to know Mr. Wilkinson’s[48] great evangelistic work in his fashionable London parish. She often went to hear him preach, read his books, and showed them to others. Mrs. Owen introduced her to the Life and philosophy of James Hinton, which made a very deep impression. At Mr. Owen’s house she met many earnest social workers and thinkers. Among these was Miss Ellice Hopkins, whose devoted work revived in tenfold force her early pity for those who need to be ‘found.’ The increasing vigour of the College life and work was ever bringing in new ideas. Men who were making their mark as thinkers and teachers of their own special subjects often came to lecture. Among the most enthralled listeners to the eloquence of Professor William Knight, to the marvellous fairy-tales of science told by Professor Barrett, was the Lady Principal herself. Teachers and educationists of widely different views came to see the work of the school, often to find that the successful head-mistress who was able to show them so much was willing and eager to learn from them, and to see matters from their standpoint. Meanwhile she was reading as widely and eagerly as ever.

It was a time when long-accepted opinions were unsettled for many, by new scientific theories, or by a greater sensitiveness to the mystery of pain and the apparent indifference of a part of the so-called religious world in presence of the deepest wrongs and suffering. Dorothea Beale had to take her part in the special difficulties of her own day. The battle has been shifted to another ground for this generation, which scarcely knows what resistance was made, what suffering was endured by some heroic souls in the last, and at what a price a larger spiritual consciousness was bought.

The contact with so many minds, the widening circle of acquaintance with workers of different views and methods, and especially the appeal for aid in religious perplexity constantly made by those who came under her influence, doubtless helped to precipitate that sorrow, which, though in its acutest phase of short duration, was the sharpest trial Miss Beale was ever called upon to experience; one on which she never ceased to look back with horror. She who had said that she ‘could truly take to herself the words of Faber,’[49] who had been from earliest childhood conscious of a protecting Presence, and had even then ‘found prayer a joy,’ now in late middle life felt herself, as it were, cast out. At an age when the inexperienced questionings of youth were over, when she hoped to find faith and hope strengthened by knowledge, it seemed for a moment as if they had died down altogether.

‘Nel mezzo cammin di nostra vita

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

Che la diritta via era smarrita.’

To write of it is to turn a page of soul-history so intimate, and for a moment so painful, that it may well be thought it should be passed over in silence. But to omit it would not be wholly faithful to the memory of one who wished certainly that this story of her inner life should be known to all who could be helped by it. To tell it, moreover, is to use her own words, for she wrote of it herself, more than once or twice. She felt, when she looked back on it afterwards, that she was obliged to go through this time of suffering in order that she might be better fitted to do the work given her, in order that others who had lost faith and hope might be helped to regain them, by knowing how she herself had passed from destruction and despair to hope and rebuilding.

The diary of this whole period is more than ever indicative of inward strife and unrest from which she would not by her own will escape to any comfort other than the highest. Among the entries, which are for the most part self-analytical and depressed, it is curious to find this: ‘Letter from —— Some vanity perhaps in the refusal.’

It was an offer of marriage from an old friend.

Once or twice there is a hint of coming sorrow before she was conscious what its nature would be. Once, when marking the anniversary of a friend’s death, she noted herself as ‘perplexed with the Incomprehensible.’ On June 27, 1881, a year before the darkness closed in, she wrote: ‘A great dread of coming sorrow, as of a calvary before me. If some bitter cup is to be poured out, Thy will be done. Only forsake me not! Salvator Mundi!’

The new year (of 1882) opened as usual with renewed self-dedication; but she mentions that she came back to Cheltenham on January 14, after the annual Retreat, ‘very broken.’ Though a persistent effort to keep up her religious rule was maintained, the clear shining of faith was much clouded. One who went to her for help at that time writes of it thus:—

‘I went to her in sore trouble at the beginning of 1882, in one of the overwhelming griefs of extreme youth, when the whole aspect of life has suddenly changed from a lovely rose-garden ... to a hideous waste. The very things which made it lovely seemed to be shining and horrible shams, with undreamed-of treachery and horror lurking behind everything. It was the culminating disillusionment to turn to her who had been such a tower of patient strength all through school-life, and find nothing, no help, no comfort, no explanation, no hope to give! Yet while there were many at that time whom I could not endure to see, or do with because of the feeling of betrayal all round, there was never that with her. It never dawned on my mind for a moment that she was herself in the horrible mire, but I understood, I suppose, in my heart. I felt sorry for her and loved her better than ever before, and I never understood till now the reason of the tender intimacy of that time, which lay under the apparent disappointment of finding no help or comfort where I had made sure of it.’

This powerlessness to help those who turned to her in their spiritual need made more poignant the sense of loss to one who loved to give freely as a mother to her children. ‘Then others came,’ she wrote afterwards of this time, ‘and one felt like the starving mother who saw the babe at her empty breast. I had no simple truths, no milk of the word to give them that they might grow thereby.’

A letter to a friend mentions books which had a destructive effect as read at this time. It was not Miss Beale’s habit deliberately to read a book which was likely to disturb or weaken faith. To an old pupil who once wrote to her of Strauss’s book, The Old Faith and the New, she had replied:—

‘September 1873.

‘I feel sorry you have read Strauss, but, of course, if you felt it your duty to do so, you were right. Still, I do not think one is bound to read everything, any more than one is to listen to all that can be said against all one’s friends. I mean a person might be ever so good, yet if we were constantly to listen to insinuations against them, if we were frequently with those who disbelieved in their goodness, and looked contemptuous when we trusted, a most well-founded confidence might result in doubt and distrust. I think we should act in religious matters as we ought in a case of friendship—refuse to hear insinuations, but ask for the grounds, arguments—not let our mind be biassed against our will and better judgment. I believe with many that these doubts are “spectres of the cave,” that if we have courage to face them, we shall see them fade away. But then we must be very much in earnest, spend time and labour and much thought upon this, as upon other subjects, and pray for the spirit of truth. I have not read Strauss, I know the general line of his arguments, but as you say he gives none here, I need not get the book to meet them.’

Now, in this period of doubt and anxiety, books by any whom Miss Beale thought to be earnest seekers for truth, whether they were orthodox or not, were freely read.

The sense of loss and discomfort seems to have grown gradually all the year. ‘Poor lesson because depressed,’ she notes on a day in February. A fortnight later in church she was ‘wrestling like Jacob; Tell me Thy Name.’ Palm Sunday, however, brought some peace. ‘I think I touched His garment’s hem.’ Each day in that Holy Week she was at an early service before school hours began, and on Easter Day wrote: ‘This Lent has been blessed.’ In Easter week she notes that she finished reading Jukes’s New Man, ‘a beautiful book.’

But before the holidays were over there was ‘a dread of coming sorrow,’ a renewed feeling of deadness and want of devotion, only ‘passive following the inward guide.’ ‘Much troubled this morning,’ she wrote on Whit-Sunday, and the need for a ‘new life-pulse’ grew larger as the summer term wore on. Yet she persisted in striving to keep her devotional rules, and for her apparent want of zeal blamed only herself. At the end of that busy term, so full of work and interests and anxieties, she wrote: ‘Be with me in the holidays. I fear them.’

Of the suffering of that time she afterwards wrote fully, tracing the steps by which she was gradually led to think that the historical evidence on which she thought her faith rested was of no value. An extract from one account is given:—

‘Even if historical evidence were there, it could not be for all. And was it there?

‘No, [only] fragments by nobodies, inconsistent versions. If God gave a perfect Man, He could not be for an age, but for all time, and how if His life passed, and we have no writing, only untrustworthy accounts? Surely, then, the life was worthless which God did not care to save for us. He stored up coal and light, our physical life, but He cared not to preserve Jesus, the spiritual life, He who had been called the Light of the world. Then it must be a delusion that He was, and God has deceived us, and we were deceived. The Pharisees were right in testing His claims. They watched Him on the Cross and there bade Him cry to the God Whom He had claimed as Father,—and He cried as the fabled prophet of old, Eli! Eli! and God disowned Him, and the words followed which proved that He was forsaken, that the thirst of soul was unappeased and His life was indeed over. And so the darkness gathered round the Cross, ever darkening as I listened to the cry. Was God indeed mocking our hopes? The old pagan vision rose before me. The symbols of the Christ were confounded with grotesque forms. I could not utter the Creeds of the Church. Yet strange to say I yet clung to a consciousness of a Father of the visible. In my troubled dreams, which haunted me day and night, I still seemed to feel there was a God, though no voice was heard for me among the trees of the garden.[50]

‘I said I will not give up my trust in God, I must reconstruct. I will not, as some who have lost faith in Christ and the eternal, give away the trust in a Father. This I thought would survive without, but with that (my faith in Christ) went all belief in the existence of any other. As I listened to the voice of creation unharmonised by the interpretation of generous love proceeding from the soul, it seemed simply horrible: the martyr slowly consuming in the fire, God looking on, refusing to interfere with natural causes. I had seen this before, but, as in that beautiful parable of the Septuagint, I had seen God was with him, and the joy overpowered the pain, and the true life was purified, and they thanked God in the fires. Now I saw no immortal hope, no resurrection; all was dark horror and amazement. No; could I keep belief in a God who had deceived mankind? Should I trust Him, pray “to Him”?[51]

‘For months I read and thought of nothing else; whenever the pressing claims of work left me for a moment, I felt the light was gone from my life. Sometimes a deeper sympathy filled me,—as I seemed like a gladiator standing with my fellows. Morituri te salutant. But generally I felt myself growing hardened by the want of power to find sympathy in my sorrow, nor could I pray. I did not often, and when I did, it was one cry—“Why, why hast Thou left us, O God—without answer to our cries? Why hast Thou uttered no word of consolation to all the groans of earth? If Thou hast not heard Jesus, none of us need pray.” He trusted in God that He would deliver Him, and was forsaken, and men have waited through the ages, as a little child would wait, shut up in prison by some cruel father, and would not at first believe that he was to be starved to death. And at last they realised that God for them was not,—only the prison-house He had built, in which they passed away their lives, in which, like a starving man, they dreamed of palaces and feasts, the delusions of their fevered brain.

‘How that old passage came home to one’s fevered soul,—“the desert shall blossom as the rose”—as the thought of one’s old Christian faith came back. What would one not give, I thought, to believe it true once more! For that lighted up the whole world, then there were living waters, consolation in every sorrow, a well-spring of divine sympathy, inexhaustible,—wells from which one could drink for ever, and pour out of one’s abundance.

‘Sometimes one did look up to the parched heavens, and though no rain fell, each time there was a little refreshing dew, as if God were answering when one let Him speak, instead of running into desert places, crying with Io, forsaken and maddened by a cruel God. Sometimes the words came then, “I will see you again.”

‘But the vision of green pasture, of waters that would quench the parching thirst of the desert, it seemed a mirage,—and no good Shepherd waded out to me in my desert. Sometimes I found other wanderers, who asked of me the waters, and this seemed to fill my heart with deeper anguish; like Hagar, I could die in the wilderness, but I could not see my child die. So I tried to escape, but I could not, and I was obliged to lift my eyes to Heaven for their sakes. I did not tell them that what I took for mirage was real,—I did not try to turn stones into bread, I could only tell them of what I felt must be the creed of Goethe, that creation is the garment of God, and these shores of earth could not be all; there must be something true and substantial behind the phenomenal. The philosophy of St. John interpreted by Browning, the consciousness of love in my own nature, bore witness to the greater love of God. The Spirit within bore witness that there was a Father of spiritual life, and therefore that a divine sonship was possible for us. And as in our desolation we looked up together, it seemed as if the old truth was coming back to us, but in a new way. Jesus had taught it, only we had not seen it before.... If we felt the witness of the Spirit prompting us to cry, Abba Father, and if there was a Father, this prompting must come from Him. And so I listened once more for this Voice. And I was not left alone in the desert, as I waited in my first grief. God sent to me messengers when I had lain down there in the stupefaction of spiritual sleep. They offered me angels’ food. I watered it with tears, but I took it,—I ate it, whilst praying that God would take away my life,—take it, lest I should tempt others into the stony desert. Yes, I, who had refused to take others to the Lord’s Table, because they were faint and hungry, and in the highways of the world,—I, who had thought it profane, thought now that my mere hunger gave me a right to come. If He was indeed there, He might fill the empty cruse with oil. He might hear me as I said, “We have no wine.” And I remembered as I dared to come in my unbelief, the words I had been taught, of the hungry being filled. I thought I had once been of the mighty and rich, now I knew I was weak and hungry, so I came. But I saw not the Master, only a stranger whom I knew not, for my eyes were holden, and I did not recognise Him.

‘Oh how often did I pine for death, not but that I could have taken the suffering. I thought that was possible, if I could have borne it alone. The grief was to feel that I should lead others away, whether I spoke or was silent. This only was right, never to say an untrue word, to teach what truth I had. But I was pledged like a clergyman. Still I did not yet know what I thought. I might read a little, for if I must find Christ was dead, I hoped, begged, God would take my life, that others might not die through me. With what joy did I see sickness come, and what disappointment there was when it was not unto death.

‘Sometimes I thought I would take some spiritual opiate,—think no more, but try to kill self into a state in which probability should content me. But I could not work nor pray by such means. And if I could content myself by a sedative, could I my children? No; I must go on till I could feel the truth of those words ever recurring to me, “And dying rise, and rising with Him, raise His brethren, ransomed by His own dear life.”

‘In darkness, I thought, “He descended into hell,” and I felt I would not rise unless I could bring my children too with me.

‘What was the state of thought [at that time]? One could only look and read and see amongst the most intellectual the loss of hold on Christianity, and with those who believed, one felt it had been as with oneself, the belief would not bear the strain that would come; the tints were put on, were not our life through assimilation.’[52]

Probably those to whom Miss Beale turned at first realised little of the distress that prompted her questions.

‘I said, “Surely there must be some one who can help where I am too weak and ignorant,” so I went to a distinguished [teacher] whom I thought so able and strong, and his concluding words sounded like a knell. “Nothing can be done.”’[53]

The darkest hour came during the early days of August when staying with friends, from whom she vainly hoped to conceal her sorrow.

‘At first I was silent, but as I could only weep day and night, I was obliged to tell them.... They kept me when I could not pay other visits. Whilst wondering at my misery they tried to help me by getting [books].’[54]

It was perhaps some relief—as of one who faces the worst—to note in her diary each fresh incoming wave of sorrowful thought.

‘1882, August 6, Sunday. At church. A nice sermon on the parable of the Unjust Steward. Talk of Newman’s books. J. said A. had some. I, thinking of J. H. N., asked to borrow. [The book] proved to be by the brother, F. Newman.

‘Monday, August 7. Read some [of F. Newman’s book]. Pitied him much.

‘Tuesday, August 8. 6 A.M.-8, read more. Miserable. After breakfast walked alone. No letter. Could not go to dinner. Terrible neuralgia. Wept nearly all day.

‘Wednesday, August 9. Awake at 4 A.M. Not up to breakfast. Decided must write [my resignation]. All is dark. “Such clouds of nameless sorrow cross, All night before my darkened eyes.” The light has gone out of the heavens. Why [does] God leave us without one word, His children orphans? Can He have left us to delusions? Tears are my meat day and night. I cannot live an untrue life. If Jesus be what I once believed Him, He would not wish it. “Every one that is of the truth heareth My Voice.” Tried to pray harder. Woke [as] in a dreary pine forest with beautiful ferns. Felt there must be a presence behind them. Then the trouble revived once more.

‘Thursday, August 10. Wrote my resignation. May my children never know this sorrow. Christian teaching spiritualised, as I have seen it, is the holiest and purest. Their souls need not be orphaned as mine. [I] cannot stay [with them]. I could not play the hypocrite, I should hate myself. Without Christ, I should not be what I was. If I could attempt to go on, which I could not for a moment contemplate since it is untrue, think if I were found out, the moral blow for my children. They would think I had been false when teaching them my deepest faith,—the joy of my life,—that which made all the suffering bearable, and all gladness double, the love of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I would suffer the loss of all things if I might win Christ and be found in Him.

‘O Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.’

The immediate sequel to the story of these few days was told in a letter to a friend:—

‘August 1882.

‘I was engaged to attend a religious conference at the end of a week. I did not quite like to give it up, for there might possibly be some hope of help, though I felt there was none. My friends begged me to go,—there was just a chance. I went,—but almost turned back after I had started, for I was so broken down I could not restrain my tears, and I was ashamed to be seen. Well, I met there [some] men of powerful mind, leaders of thought in their different departments, who had gone through periods of darkness, but had waited for the dawn, and now they believed.... After two days I told my grief to a sympathising friend, who was surprised at my wretchedness, and her calm faith gave me a little calmness too. So the day before we were to leave I ventured to tell all my trouble to the clergyman who had invited me. I think I may dare to say that my faith has come back—not as it was before, but more spiritual; once more I can say the Creed, and I think I shall be able to teach again....’

The ‘religious conference’ was at Stoke, a little village in Shropshire, where the rector, the Rev. Rowland Corbet, was in the habit of gathering some who were earnestly studying the difficult questions of the day. Miss Beale wrote of these gatherings in the letter already quoted:—

‘There are only about twelve staying in the house. No one is put out of the synagogue for not seeing the truth, and they are not afraid to ask questions, but none are invited who are not supposed to be seeking for the light.’

That a door to the light was at this conference quickly opened for Miss Beale may be seen in the letters she wrote, on her return to Cheltenham after it was over, to the friends who had helped her so much:—

‘August 19, 1882.

‘Dear Mr. Corbet,—I could not say one word of thanks this morning: I think you understood.

‘It is good for us tempest-tossed people to see the restful faith of the veterans who come to help us. Certainly the old ship in which I have somehow sailed upon the waves for so many years is a wreck. I must try to believe He will set my feet upon a rock.

‘Yesterday things began to get clearer: your kind and patient explanations of the alphabet of the spiritual made me follow the discussion better afterwards, and I felt I could begin again to join in the Church’s Creed with a deeper meaning than before. I suppose one can’t expect to come out of the grave at once,—but how different is this Saturday from last, it seems as if some æon had gone by. I don’t know yet what I think, except that I believe I shall see the light and rise and always remain, yours very gratefully,

D. Beale.’

To Mrs. Russell Gurney:—

‘August 27, 1882.

‘Dear Mrs. Russell Gurney,—I have had such a happy Sunday,—I can hardly believe it is the same earth that seemed to me so dead the week before, when I could not go to Church, but wandered about quite desolate.

‘Three weeks ago, if any one had spoken, as I am doing now, I should have thought it superstitious, and I don’t think it will be well either for myself or others to speak much of it now, only to one who, like you, understands—and who helped to take off the “grave-clothes.”

‘I want to use my limbs first, to get back to my old work now, and see if there is really a new life; I want to see if I can help some for whom I could do nothing before.

‘I am with delightful people. Mr. Webb is just a living picture of Chaucer’s Good Parson and well known in the scientific world: his special field is astronomy. He showed us a wonderful gas-nebula on Saturday night. He quite believes in spiritual manifestations, and seems to think with Professor Barrett about the ether.

‘I have to thank you much, dear Mrs. Gurney, for your sympathy. It was such a help to me to be able to speak to you. I meant to say nothing to any one, but I could not help it. The story of your own vision helped me, as it was something like my own: it is so much what Browning describes at the end of “Saul,” when David has realised the Divine love, and feels the living pulse beating in all nature. Everybody helped me in some way, but especially Mr. Corbet’s teaching, which seems wonderfully beautiful.

‘I dare say it was the same last year; but different to me, because I was comparatively satisfied then, not poor and needy (as I came this time), and therefore ready to understand.

‘“I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice”: my text for to-day.’

She felt like one set free from prison, but the newly recovered liberty was used with caution. ‘You will like to know,’ she wrote to a friend in the following year, ‘that the fitful gleams of sunlight, which used to come after the dark night, have become now something like a steady shining. I was able to get a few quiet days at Christmas, and then first I began to feel that I should be able to give thanks for this terrible experience, and the thankfulness has grown ever since.’

As she said, the thankfulness grew. But in the very heart of the fire she had felt no regret, known no complaining. She was willing to suffer, if by that means she might help the more. On August 15, just a week after the day she always remembered as ‘Tuesday the 8th,’ she wrote of one whose calling in life was to teach others: ‘You say he has been reading sceptical books; I want him to go on doing so. He must know how deep the questions go, or he will be fighting windmills, as I have done.’

It will be asked by what steps the ascent was made, and what the height from which the new spiritual horizons were discerned; what was the train of thought which brought back the possibility of saying the Church’s Creed? The mental process, if it can be disentangled from an exercise which engaged all the faculties of soul and spirit, was probably that suggested in the words of Amiel: ‘Chacun ne comprend que ce qu’il retrouve en soi.’ But the research and the retrieval were not simply individual and within, they involved the scrutiny of widespread religious instincts, cravings and needs. They were aided above all by the contemplation of martyr deaths and martyr lives, which in their continuous and abiding witness to the faith are seen to constitute a claim to authority.

Miss Beale herself strove to show how the doubting spirit was silenced by an answer of faith, in a little paper called ‘Building,’ which is dated September 8. Here she wrote:—

‘Sweep away external proofs, we must believe in a God and in His love.

‘We see He speaks to His children through the wondrous language of Nature, drawing them to His Heart and teaching ever new trust through it.

‘He shows His Father Heart in the love of the human, ignorant,—for the child.

‘In all ages He has made man feel His Presence in the heart and yearn after Him.

‘There is a long witness down the ages that to those who long for His Presence and follow holiness, He gives the great reward of His conscious sympathy, speaking in their hearts, so that they know it is His Voice. In different ages, in different ways, as men need the language they understand.

‘To Abraham and the prophets, to Socrates, to Buddha teaching the Karma, to Moses the divine writing,—to saints who sought Him in later times.

‘Why impeach the testimony of Christendom as to the Resurrection, if it is what we must believe in, if it is just the good news for which the world was then dying? We know Paul and John believed it, and men believed them then; and the miracle of the Christian Church which is before our eyes, and the teaching of the Christ is found to be the food of the soul, and in prayer as men drink it in, they hand on Sacramental life, which is its own witness. We want that!

‘We can believe that for some inscrutable reason the Eternal educates His children in time.

‘Perhaps we have to go through these depths of blankness that we may not bottle up the spiritual to one time or church or country, but believe God is really eternal, omnipresent; that He does dwell with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, and who trembles at His Presence felt in the darkness. We have to learn to see the Spirit of Christ dwelling in each man, regenerating him to the true and higher life.

‘We have to see it is God’s method to work through the man,—therefore the treasure is in earthen vessels,—the light is dimmed by the medium. But if it were given whole and complete by angels, the moral nature could no more be drawn out than the intellect could have been, had God revealed the kalendars and Kepler’s Laws.

‘So through the Man Christ Jesus, Who emptied Himself ere He could speak to man, Who, as His wondrous teaching, life and resurrection testify, stood in some different relation to God than other men, God has spoken to the whole world.’

Another paper of this period, entitled ‘Of my Religious Opinions,’ concludes thus:—

‘Yes, it was this. The consciousness of a universal life of God in man which lifted me up once more to see God in Christ, to see the New Man coming to the birth in all for whom Christ lived, and the whole world existed that this might be, that the whole being of the creature might be lifted into responsive sympathy with a sympathetic Father, and those followers of Christ Who was ever preaching the religion of Humanity were to lift the imperfect yet real Church of Christ to a higher life. Upon a world which seemed dead, which no prophet staff could restore, they were to stretch themselves, heart to heart, their own warm palpitating life was to rouse, and the power of love could raise the dead. We must learn that old lesson that no creature is common or unclean. We must enter as never before into the full meaning of the Name by which God was known to Abraham—I AM,—the Eternal. Ours has been a God of time, He is the Living God, lighting every man that cometh into the world. But here, light is struggling with darkness. There shall be no night there in that day dawn beyond the tomb.

‘Have you not been taught that the written word is imperfect without the heavenly interpretation, and does not your own experience confirm this, and the history of the records of the Christ bear it out? Enough we have as a foundation, but we must build thereon, or there will be no home for our soul. This is the method of God, revealing to us that we can only help one another. God must teach us all. They shall be all taught of God, here and hereafter.

‘Here the phenomenal and the imperfect is the only possible revelation to man, but through these he is being educated for the real, the actual. He will one day know God.’

The writer of these words might indeed have sung, ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room.’ But the daily journal shows no trace of exultation, far less of relaxing watchfulness. It is surely impossible to exaggerate the importance of the jealous care with which devotional rules were guarded. More than all the high thoughts and noble imaginings with which she was so wonderfully gifted, this lifelong obedience came to her aid in the great crisis. Habits of prayer, daily acts of self-sacrifice and self-consecration, had been maintained even when their meaning seemed to be clouded. When sight was restored, when a greater sense of spaciousness came into her life, they were there to protect her in the newly found liberty. The tale of them remains to show that the doubts of this dark year were akin to that thirst for God which in all ages has been the portion of the saints.

May it not be said that they were the outcome of a passionate desire to help; that this descent into darkness as of the grave was necessary to one who yearned to give herself utterly to aid others to find the way to the light? ‘Can ye drink indeed?’ was asked of those who willed to share the divine work and joy, and in all times it has been given to a few to be brought through suffering into that region of consciousness in which they are made ‘able.’

CHAPTER X
THE GUILD

‘We have a picture which gives the ideal of a College—the Golden Staircase—whence each should go forth into the great world carrying some beautiful instrument with which to utter the music which is in her heart.’—D. Beale, Guild Address, 1894.

Miss Beale’s circle of influence definitely widened beyond the College itself in 1880 when the first number of the Magazine appeared. It opened with a characteristic introduction from the Lady Principal, who up to her death remained the editor.

The Magazine was started, said Miss Beale, in order that past and present members of the College might enrich each other by interchange of thoughts. Mere information concerning the temporary doings of one’s friends was a secondary consideration, the value of which was, however, fortunately seen by sub-editors and others. A column of births, deaths, and marriages became established in the Magazine as early as the second number. This naturally in time developed in interest. The obituary column came to include all who had the slightest connection with the College; newspaper accounts of those who were in any way distinguished were also added.

In 1887 the first Chronicle of passing events belonging to the College and its old members was inserted, though the space for it was grudgingly afforded by the editor, who could not bear to limit her space for the budding ideas she loved to foster. Soon, however, she came to value what was practically a contemporary history of the College, and as her pride in her old pupils increased with years, it became a great pleasure to notice all their doings in varied walks of life. Engaged in philanthropic work, in literature, in art or society, they were all of interest to her, and not among the least dear were those whose homes lay in foreign parts, those closely connected with the diplomatic service and the growth of the British Empire.[55] The Chronicle was a portion of the Magazine sure of finding readers, but there was no page more welcome to all than the brief but pithy preface in which the editor named the chief contents, touched on some matter of note to the readers, or urged forward the lagging subscriber.

As the College interest widened with the ever-increasing number of old pupils, the Chronicle became too limited a record to stand alone. When the Magazine was about seventeen years old ‘Parerga’ appeared for the first time, telling of activities which lay outside the immediate scope of College work, yet were due in part to the influence of the Alma Mater, to ‘the spiritual force, the higher volition and action.’ Miss Beale, who found in the Magazine a strong link with her large scattered family, also in later years freely printed letters she received from various members abroad. She did not care much for articles on travel, writing on one occasion that she received too many descriptions, and would like in their place to have more records of observation in the fields of natural history and other sciences. But she treasured letters, and showed them widely. Indeed, it was sometimes startling for the writer of a private letter to Miss Beale to find whole extracts published in the Magazine for all the world to see.

Almost from the beginning there were reviews of books. These were generally written by the editor. There were also notices of books by old pupils. Of these Miss Beale was proud, and she never failed to mention them, often reprinting portions of reviews by the press; but she would not review them herself, saying, ‘Books by old pupils claim our notice; we must leave criticism to those less interested in the writers.’

Fortunately Miss Beale was not content with merely reviewing and editing. Many a number of the Magazine contained a long contribution from herself, such as an article reprinted from another periodical, an address given at a gathering of old pupils, or at some more general meeting. The first two editions of the History of the College were also printed here. Of her articles which were not of special College interest, the most notable were those upon Browning. One of these, written in spring 1890, shortly after the poet’s death, contains a brief clear statement of the value of his philosophy. The other writers of the Magazine have been chiefly old pupils, some of whose names, as, for example, those of Jane Harrison, Beatrice Harraden, Bertha Synge, May Sinclair, are known in wider fields of literature. But any who made a sincere effort were welcomed, encouraged, and—edited. Present pupils have rarely written, but of late an attempt has been made to secure more contributions from these. Members of the Council, and others connected with the College by the ties of friendship or work, frequently helped the Magazine with papers or verses. For years every number was enriched with a poem or article from the pen of Mrs. James Owen, that friend whose keen intellectual interests and strong sympathy were put so largely at Miss Beale’s service when this literary venture was first made.

To find contributors Miss Beale went even beyond the outer circle of the College. ‘We always hope to have some good writing in our Magazine, thus to maintain a high standard,’ she had said at the beginning. She liked to gain the notice of those who were eminent in literature or science for this dearly loved literary child, and as occasion brought her in contact with any who were distinguished for the things she appreciated she would send them the Magazine, often asking for a paper. Letters from people of widely differing thought and position, acknowledging the receipt of the Magazine, are now in the College archives. They vary in warmth and interest. The late Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol wrote in 1889: ‘However busy I may be, I always find time to read portions of [the Magazine], and I am always thankful to recognise not merely the cultivated, but the wise and—what we men specially value—the womanly tone that characterises it. I read with much interest your article on the Sorbonne gathering.’ Bishop Westcott in 1890 wrote, on receiving the number containing Miss Beale’s ‘In Memoriam’ article on Browning: ‘May I confess that when the copy of the Ladies’ College Magazine came this morning with the letters, my correspondence was at once interrupted? I felt constrained to read your words on Browning, just and wise and helpful and suggestive.’ Some notes are little more than the acknowledgment of a polite friend who had ‘already cut the pages.’ The request for contributions was not always granted; sometimes it was won by a little importunity. It brought about rather an amusing incident with Mr. Ruskin, whose letters on the subject and on some of Miss Beale’s own Magazine articles are too characteristic to be omitted.

Miss Beale sent him the number containing her paper on ‘Britomart.’ He replied at once:—

‘March 12, 1887.

‘Have you not yet to add to your Britomart, at p. 219, due justification of Feminine—may we not rather call it Disguise—than Lie? And, for myself, may I say that I think Britomart should have sung to the Red Knight, not he to Britomart.—Ever faithfully yours,

J. Ruskin.’

Five days later he wrote:—

‘But I much more than like your essay on Britomart.

‘I am most thankful to have found the head of a Girls’ College able to do such a piece of work, and having such convictions and aspirations, and can only assure you how glad I shall be to find myself capable of aiding you in anything.... I trespass no further on you to-day, but have something to say concerning ball-play as a Britomartian exercise, before saying which, however, I will inquire of the Librarian what ground spaces the College commands, being so limited in its bookshelves.—And believe me, ever your faithful servt.,

John Ruskin.’

Miss Beale replied to this by sending her paper on ‘Lear,’ to which came this response:—

‘March 22, 1887.

‘I am entirely glad to hear of the Oxford plan, which seems faultless, and am most happy to get the King Lear, though I hope you have never learned as much of human life as to be able to read him as you can Britomart. What I want to know is whether Cordelia was ever so little in love—with any body, except her Father.’

Two days later came the following:—

‘March 24, 1887.

‘I have been reading your Lear with very great interest. It is one of the subtlest and truest pieces of Shakespeare criticism I ever saw, but just as I guessed—misses the key note. You never enter on the question what it is that drives Lear mad! And throughout you fall into the fault which women nearly always commit if they don’t err on the other side,—of always talking of love as if it had nothing to do with sex.... I am extremely glad to note your interest in and knowledge of music.—Ever faithfully and respectfully yours,

J. Ruskin.’

After this letter there was a pause in a correspondence which had been kept up pretty briskly on various subjects. In June, however, Miss Beale wrote again,—the purport of her letter may be gathered from the answer.

‘June 8, 1887.

‘I never have been ill this year; the reports you heard or saw in papers were variously malicious or interested. But I have been busy, in very painful or sorrowful business—at Oxford or at home—nor even in the usual tenor of spring occupation could I have answered rightly the different questions you sent me. Especially, I could not tell you anything of your paper on Lear, because I think women should never write on Shakespeare, or Homer, or Æschylus, or Dante, or any of the greater powers in literature. Spenser, or Chaucer, or Molière, or any of the second and third order of classics—but not the leaders. And you really had missed much more in Lear than I should like to tell you.

‘I really thought I had given the College my books—but if I haven’t, I won’t—not even if you set the Librarian to ask me; for it does seem to me such a shame that a girl can always give her dentist a guinea for an hour’s work, and her physician for an opinion; and she can’t give me one for what has cost me half my life to learn, and will help her till the end of hers to know.

‘Please go on with your book exactly as you like to have it. I have neither mind nor time for reading just now.—Ever most truly yrs.,

J. Ruskin.’

Mr. Ruskin permitted the reprint of a few extracts from his own writings in the Magazine, on which his criticism as a whole was not very encouraging. One of his letters, indeed, called forth a protest from Miss Beale, to which he replied thus:—

‘June 15, 1887.

‘Dear Miss Beale,—I am grieved very deeply to have written what I did of your dear friend’s verses. If you knew how full my own life has been of sorrow, how every day of it begins with a death-knell, you would bear with me in what I will yet venture to say to you as the head of a noble school of woman’s thought, that no personal feelings should ever be allowed to influence you in what you permit your scholars either to read or to publish.’

And again a few days later:—

‘Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, June 19, 1887.

‘Dear Miss Beale,—So many thanks, and again and again I ask your pardon for the pain I gave you. I had no idea of the kind of person you were, I thought you were merely clever and proud.

‘These substituted verses are lovely.—Ever gratefully (1) yrs.,

‘J. R.

‘(1) I mean, for the way you have borne with my letters. You will not think it was because I did not like my own work to have the other with it that I spoke as I did.’

Mr. Shorthouse also once contributed to the Magazine, sending a little story called ‘An Apologue.’

The work entailed by the Magazine was, on the whole, pleasant and interesting to its editor. But she was grieved sometimes if she thought old pupils did not appreciate it, or if contributions fell short. It was not always easy to get enough articles of the kind she desired, and the difficulty was increased by the severe censorship she exercised. ‘About one hour wasted in fretting over Magazine,’ runs the diary of April 2, 1891.

The Magazine was not without its faults. ‘How bad the best of us!’ says Punch, according to Ruskin. But it had the conspicuous merit of offering encouragement to young writers, of promoting a spirit of unity, and fostering sympathetic interest among those whose lives were necessarily far apart. ‘We hope,’ Miss Beale had said in her first preface, ‘that the papers on work may be helpful in suggesting ways of usefulness.’[56] This hope was practically realised. How far the young writers profited by each other’s thoughts can be less easily gauged; but doubtless some learned at least one lesson the Magazine was meant to teach, that if they intended to work, they ‘must not shrink from the hardest and most fruitful work, i.e. thinking.’[57]

Miss Beale’s influence was again extended in manifold and ever-developing ways when, in 1883, the first meeting of former pupils was held in the College.

At this date the number of regular pupils was five hundred. Only six years before a proposal had been made to limit the numbers to three hundred, but each year saw an increase, and a consequent addition to the ranks of those who carried the influence of the College into the larger world outside.

It had been felt for some time by the Principal and others to whom the College was dear, that an association of old pupils should be formed, but of what nature and name could not be determined without a representative meeting. A suitable occasion for this presented itself in 1883, which was a sort of Jubilee year for the College, Miss Beale having then been its Principal for twenty-five years. Many old pupils expressed a wish to mark the great occasion by a personal gift to Miss Beale; she, as was to be expected, asked that it might be given to her ‘husband,’ the College. It was a moment of almost unsullied prosperity, as could be seen by the buildings which were constantly growing more stately and suitable. In the previous year they had been much enlarged, and the whole College life benefited by the addition of the Music and Art wing. The old music-rooms were little better than cupboards, the new ones contained light, air, and space, as well as the necessary pianoforte. The first drawing-room was but an insufficient classroom, in which a cast of any size could not be placed. The new studio was spacious and properly lighted. Both additions at this period spoke of Miss Beale’s method in educational development, also of the order in which her own full mental life unfolded. First she would have the exact, the severe, the discipline of grammar and rule, then the expansion of beauty in thought and symbol.

And the gift of the old pupils could not have been better chosen. It took the form of an organ for what was then the largest hall, the First Division Room. Here the daily prayers of the three divisions took place. Sir Walter Parratt settled the specifications for the organ, which was placed above the Lady Principal’s dais.

The choir, which up to this time had been dependent on the aid of a harmonium, was augmented and improved, and the daily music at the school prayers became a feature of College life in which Miss Beale took delight. Occasionally her directions to the choir were embarrassing. She liked music to be very piano, and required a great deal of expression to bring out the full meaning of the words sung.

Mr. Ruskin was also momentarily interested by it. He was as suggestive and dogmatic on the subject as on any other that he touched. Once he wrote to Miss Beale, ‘All music properly so called is of the Celestial Spheres. It aids and gives law to Joy, or it ennobles and comforts Sorrow.’ On hearing of the organ and ‘girl-organist,’ he hoped ‘to be able to work out some old plans with her,’ and unfolded them thus:—

‘I think you may be willing to help me in the plan chiefly for the last four or five years in my mind, of getting a girls’ choral service well organised in a college chapel. The most beautiful service I have ever heard in any church of any country is that of the Convent of the Trinità at Rome, entirely sung by the sisters, unseen; and quite my primary idea in girl education—peasant or princess, is to get the voice perfectly trained in the simplest music of noblest schools. Finding your organist is a girl, and that she is interested in the book on Plain Chant I sent her, it seems to me my time has come, and I am going to write to Miss Lefevre at Somerville, Miss Gladstone at Newnham, and Miss Welch at Girton, to beg them to consider with you what steps they could take to this end. If you could begin by giving enough time for the training of the younger girls, I think I could, with that foundation, press for a more advanced action in the matter at Cambridge and Oxford.’

Miss Beale obviously replied to this with some questions about the training of the choir, for Mr. Ruskin’s next and rapidly following letter closes thus:—

‘As for the choir, nothing is necessary but a due attention to girls’ singing, as well as their dancing. It ought to be as great a shame for a girl not to be able to sing, up to the faculty of her voice, might I say, as to speak bad grammar. You could never rival the Trinità di Monte, but could always command the chanting of the psalms with sweetness and clearness, and a graceful Te Deum and Magnificat.’

Besides the organ, Miss Beale’s wedding gifts included the first light of a stained-glass window above the new grand staircase. This was drawn by Miss Thompson, and executed by Clayton and Bell. Miss Beale herself chose the subject for the whole—a series of scenes from her beloved story of ‘Britomart.’

Over and above the opening of the new buildings, and the installation of the wedding gifts, there was in the early part of the summer term some excitement and much pleasant sense of preparation for the gathering of old pupils fixed for the 6th and 7th of July.

Then, into the midst of the glad anticipation, came as with transcendent suddenness Mrs. Owen’s death on June 19. Hers was indeed

‘a spirit that went forth

And left upon the mountain-tops of death

A light that made them lovely.’

But for many the happiness of the coming meeting was marred, most of all for her in whose honour it had been largely arranged. Miss Beale made no change, but went through all the proceedings as they had been planned, dwelling never for a moment on her sense of bereavement and loss, but speaking calmly even in public of the life that had passed out of sight.

The first meeting, on the evening of July 6, was a conversazione in the Upper or Second Division Hall. An unexpectedly large number of old pupils were present, and on the next day at the ordinary College prayers Miss Beale gave what was practically the first Guild address. Though made on an occasion of so much personal interest and gratification to herself, this address was remarkable not only for the piercing insight with which she ever penetrated below what was apparent or obvious, but also for what, for want of a better word, must be called its soberness. Touched, emotional as the speaker always was, keenly alive to the sense of union and communion with all lives that in the highest sense had come in contact with her own, happy in recognising the College to be a step by which souls might ascend out of mere material interests, marking with joy its noble work in the progress of the ‘higher education’ of women, she chastened all excess of feeling by the calm sincerity with which she could contemplate ‘Even in the green, the faded tree.’ ‘Schools too,’ she said, ‘like the members of which they are composed, have their period of growth, manhood, and decay. Some tell us the first is over for us, and that we, too, have settled down into vigorous manhood. I am not so sure that we have quite done with growth, even in the outside body; but however that may be, I trust there is that among us, which is not even like the most substantial building, not like the outward form, liable to decay and death.’

Thus quietly she spoke, marking for all that heard her that there was no commonplace elation or poor ambition in her thoughts and feelings for her school. On this really momentous occasion for the College, when its members as a whole were summoned to catch a glimpse of all it could be of help and blessing in a far larger world than its own, the Principal spoke less of work accomplished than of growth, and ‘the silent witness of a beautiful life as a power to bless.’ She said less about the gifts with which the College had been enriched, than of some visible sacraments of Nature with which these gifts should bring them into touch. She dwelt specially on the great meanings of music. ‘In the Psalm of Life each is necessary to the perfection of that glorious music, which we shall hear and understand when the discords of earth have been resolved.’

In conclusion Miss Beale sketched the possibility of an association of old pupils, such as already existed in some boys’ schools, and was not wholly unknown among girls. ‘When I read of meetings of old Etonians, Rugbeians, Marlburians, and of works undertaken by them in common, and know how strong is the tie of affection which binds many of our old pupils to their Alma Mater, I have often wished there were some means of uniting us into an association.’ She named also the uses and aims of such an association. It is needless to say that though its members strive to bear in mind the objects their Principal and President put before them, rules, precisely to embody them, could not be framed.

‘Members should consider themselves united together to help in sustaining, especially in distant countries, as high an intellectual and social standard as possible, first amongst those of their own class. Thus reading societies, mutual improvement societies, libraries, etc., would be helped on by them. They would bear in mind the College motto, “Let no man think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the Book of God’s Word, or in the Book of God’s Works; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress and proficiency in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity and not to grovelling; to use and not to ostentation.”[58] Some articles of their creed would be—(a) that influence radiates from a centre, and hence it is a duty all through life to continue one’s own education; (b) that the nearer we stand in intellectual and social position, the stronger are our ties to any, and the greater are our duties; (c) that the worst thing one can do with any talent one possesses is to bury it. Rules would have to be framed concerning admission.’

Miss Beale added that secretaries to the proposed association had already been appointed: Mrs. Ashley Smith for the general work and organisation, Miss Flora Ker as local secretary. This announcement of her appointment to what proved to be a very strenuous work was the first suggestion that Mrs. Smith received that she should even undertake it. In an article in the next Magazine Miss Beale unfolded her plan more fully, suggesting a few rules. She proposed further that the badge of the association should be a little brooch engraved with a figure of her beloved Britomart.

The idea of a guild of old pupils was eagerly received, and a committee at once formed to deal with its organisation. In all these arrangements Miss Beale showed great strength of mind and self-control in being able to stand aside and let others work out the details of the scheme, even submitting her own judgment to that of the younger ones, whom she thought called upon to do the work. Yet she was in a true sense President of the Guild, guiding and directing where she would not command. Indeed, this ever-growing society which multiplied interests for her was largely her own inception, at a time when her special work, the College, was also increasing rapidly. The power of mind which could keep the right hold on both is certainly rare.

The first committee consisted of associates of the College and a few other old pupils. Meetings were held to draw up the organisation of the new society, and this was made known at large in a delightful article by Mrs. Ashley Smith in the Magazine for spring 1884. In this the writer adventured far enough into the future to be able to suggest the possibility, at no very distant date, of some corporate work, ‘such as is done by many boys’ schools,’ but in 1884 the time for this had not arrived for Cheltenham girls.

The Lower Hall, Ladies’ College Cheltenham
from a photograph by Miss Bertha Synge.

The second large gathering of old pupils, which took place on July 8 and 9, 1884, is always reckoned as the first meeting of the Guild, the association being on that occasion formally founded under the name of ‘The Guild of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College.’ It is interesting to note that what then seemed a large gathering really included less than eighty former pupils of the College; ten years later, at the fourth Guild meeting, there were nearly five hundred, and the number has increased ever since. The daisy was chosen as an emblem for the Guild: its choice and its significance were explained by the President in her address on Saturday, July 9. In a second address at this time, given after the candidates for Guild membership had received their ‘Masonic sign,’ Miss Beale dwelt chiefly on the practical questions arising out of the existence of the new association. She spoke of the difficulty of decision among the many opinions which must necessarily exist in a large college; she hoped that ‘whatever decision might finally be arrived at, all would cheerfully submit to it, and if their own individual tastes were not in every case gratified, would find their satisfaction in giving up their own wishes for the sake of the majority. She herself had had to submit, she hoped cheerfully, to an adverse vote.’ The rules were then read. Of these it is sufficient to say here that they made it difficult for any one whose life was spent in a mere pleasure-seeking spirit to be a member of the Guild. The rules were accepted for two years, and two courses of study were suggested for junior members.

In the year following these meetings, Mrs. Ashley Smith wrote an article for the Magazine on the reports received from various members and on the general working of the Guild, which by the end of 1885 numbered nearly two hundred members. This is now an old story, nor is there anything specially remarkable in the many details of work in Sunday-schools and coffee-clubs. Yet even at the time when the Guild, compared with its present self, looked little more than ‘seven maids with seven mops,’ the tale of individual work done shows that already much quiet persistent effort was being made by Miss Beale’s old girls. This association, founded on principles rather than rules, was indicative of its origin in a mind which habitually dwelt rather on being than doing. The small beginning, the gradual steady growth, the outcome of ideals and thoughts, were consistent with the whole of the College history. And to re-read the story of the foundation of the Guild is to remember once more how many quiet, unobtrusive, untiring workers have helped to make that history. In especial, the immense work and patience of the secretaries can perhaps never be adequately recognised: the labour of merely reading and tabulating the reports was considerable.

‘The General Secretary,’ wrote Mrs. Ashley Smith on one occasion, ‘on receiving the reports enters under more than sixty different headings the occupations of all the Guild members. It will be easily understood that the task of reducing to order and collating a chaotic mass of miscellaneous information on all subjects, from the keeping of poultry to the study of Hebrew, from making the beds to organising institutes, is not a very simple affair, and that therefore an immense saving of time and trouble is effected when the proper form is used, and it does not become necessary to wade through a letter full of apologies and exculpatory remarks, before one can arrive at the gist of the report.’

On another occasion, after enumerating the different charitable and self-improving societies to which Guild members belonged, she said:

‘It almost gives one a headache to read this long list of occupations; and when at the end, hoping for a little breathing space, we come to an “odd minute society,” it puts the finishing touch to the bewildering sensation of restless activity, and one begins to wish for a “Sit-down-in-peace-and-calm-yourself Society.”’

The reports, a matter of obligation to the junior members of the Guild, were often looked over by the President, who would surprise the secretaries by her detailed knowledge of the home surroundings and characters of girls whom she hardly knew by sight. ‘What is so-and-so doing now?’ she would ask, and on being told, would say, ‘She ought to be doing more,’ or ‘less,’ and perhaps make some other criticism. Not less surprising was her memory of former discussions. ‘She never forgot,’ writes Mrs. Griffith, ‘what had been said. Sometimes she began again, continuing the conversation just where we left off, after a three months’ interval.’

The secretaries were also impressed by the way in which the President held herself bound by its smallest rules. Miss Helen Mugliston, who succeeded Mrs. Griffith as General Secretary in 1898, said Miss Beale was ‘perfect to work under. Having given you the task, she gave also her absolute trust and support throughout the whole of it.’

The second meeting of the Guild was held in June 1886, lasting from a Friday evening to the following Tuesday morning. The President’s opening address dealt with work and duty. This year, for the first time, the Guild was also addressed by an outside speaker, the Dean of Gloucester. Mrs. Ashley Smith, in summing up her impressions of the gatherings of this year, rejoiced in the interest the members took in the proceedings. ‘We cannot,’ she added, ‘certainly be accused of a servile unanimity in opinions or in the expression of them; but I hope we are united in underlying principles.’

It was not until two years later that the sense of fellowship was strengthened, and the individual desires to help others directed by the resolve to organise a corporate work, a work in which not only all Guild members might help according to their opportunities, but in which also all old pupils and others connected with the College might be invited to join. This was formally proposed at the Guild meeting of 1888, and an idea as to what shape it might take was thrown out in a paper then read, which told for the first time something of what Miss Beale had done by means of the Loan Fund.

To say that Miss Beale wished the corporate work to be of such a nature as to carry on that which she had long been doing for impecunious students, but feebly expresses what was really an earnest desire and hope. The claim she had upon the Guild, the importance that must attach to her lightest wish, was recognised; and yet,—yet, many felt that there were stronger reasons still why another kind of work should be chosen. Consequently no decision could be made at once, and those who had heard and discussed the paper parted after merely voting that the Guild ‘should undertake some corporate work.’ Among so many workers there were necessarily many ideas; the question was too important to be hastily decided, and it was resolved to give time for suggestions to be made and considered before anything final was done. The Committee appointed to consider these reduced them to three schemes of work, on which all members were asked to vote. These were:—

1. A scheme for educating at College a few pupils who were worthy of education, but unable to pay the fees.

2. A scheme for taking over an elementary school in order to work it through teachers who had been trained in College.

3. The third scheme, which was carried, was submitted to the Guild in these words: ‘That the corporate fund be devoted to starting and supporting a mission in one of our large towns, the place to be decided by the votes of the Guild Members.’

It was but natural that President and members should have different ideas on such an occasion. Dorothea Beale, who had never ceased to hear and obey the call she had received as a girl to help women, and with them the race, by means of improved education, longed to see those she had taught and trained freely sharing with others the very same advantages they had received. The difficulties which beset her own youth were still fresh in her mind. The need for good teachers still existed. She had seen the work she wanted the Guild to take up in operation for years, knew that it did not pauperise, that it blessed giver and receiver, and was increasingly fruitful, like good seed in good ground. On the other hand, she had a profound suspicion of much charitable work of the day, thinking that ‘it will quickly perish because it does not aim at developing energy, inward power. To do for others what they ought to do for themselves is to degrade them in the order of creation.’[59] She could far more easily bear to see people suffering from hunger and nakedness than from loss of will power and sense of responsibility. This was partly, perhaps, because she did not know nor in the least realise the miseries and difficulties of extreme poverty.

Miss Beale’s misgivings about the East End work were probably never quite set at rest. Writing to Mrs. Charles Robinson in 1899, she said: ‘I shall perhaps sleep two nights at St. Hilda’s East. I feel the whole question of Settlements most difficult. It was undertaken against my judgment, and yet the guidance all the way seems to point to its being right. Sisters and Deaconesses are much better for this work, yet there are some whom we can enlist who will never join and could not join “Orders.”’

The Guild members who had been trained by their head not always acquiescingly to ‘do the next thing,’ but to think out questions, to plan carefully for the best if hardest, belonged to a new generation and had received another call. They saw how greatly educated women were needed to deal with charity organisation, with labour problems, with the children of the poor in schools and workhouses. Many of them were already at work for these. They felt, too, that they should take their part in helping to rouse others to study and work for the poor. On the other hand, they saw the need for cheap, good girls’ education to be one which was lessening every year. They had never felt it themselves, had had no struggle for training under pressure of adverse circumstances. Finally, they must have known that it was work which Miss Beale would not fail to carry on, meeting every necessity which was brought to her personal notice.

On May 6, 1889, a general meeting of the Guild was held in London to consider further the lines on which the adopted scheme should be carried out. It was decided that the Guild Settlement should be made in London, in the parish of St. John’s, Bethnal Green, described by its vicar, the Rev. G. Bromby, who warmly welcomed the Cheltenham workers, as a ‘typical East End parish of the better sort.’

At this meeting the President introduced the subject by saying:

‘I trust we shall be able to try to win harmony out of notes not altogether concordant. Some of us come with a feeling of disappointment that the scheme we desired has been rejected;—I am one of these. I not only accept my defeat, I feel sure that you have sought guidance of that inward oracle which must ever be our supreme ruler, you have done what conscience bade, and so it is right. As regards my own scheme, I only allude to it to say, that having now to continue it single-handed, I cannot help you as much as I could wish, and I just refer to it to-day in the hope that you will remember it when I am no longer here.’

In these few words only did Miss Beale at the time announce her own disappointment and anxiety. There was much more she might have said, which she did in effect say in an early draft of her speech, which she fortunately did not destroy. Here her misgivings show themselves plainly. They were due to her foresight and judgment, yet it is likely that in some ways the untried workers, whom she feared were lightly taking upon themselves responsibilities to which they might prove unequal, really knew more than herself of the scope and details of the actual task before them.

This is what Miss Beale wrote but did not say:—

‘It is no use concealing from you, for I could not, that I am greatly disappointed. But when I have said that, I have done; I accept the defeat. Others whose schemes have equally been rejected are suffering, thinking, perhaps, it is hard they have been met with so little sympathy. If they do not think well to join in this, no one will blame them, I hope, but will believe that they refuse because they ought not to give except as conscience requires, but let them give or spend in the best way they can all they would have bestowed on the Guild scheme of their heart’s choice.

‘This matter has brought before me many things which seem to show that our organisation needs some more distinct ideal. Like some “Topsy,” it could say in its infancy, “’spects I growed!” But when it undertakes to do something on its own account, then questions of power and how much power it should exercise, the questions of law and liberty which need to be faced, and which we shall, I trust, grow stronger and wiser in facing,—these have come before me with painful strength because as your President I had to face them. I was strongly opposed to the London scheme; I felt we were far too young, both in the age of the majority of our members, and also in the age of our organisation, to undertake such a great scheme. I had the strongest dislike to fashions in philanthropy, and especially is it most undesirable to familiarise the young with lives led in the slums of heathen London. Only those whose faith has had years to grow strong seem called to such work.

‘I could not see the Head whom I could trust with its management, and such a centre of work could not be ruled by several equal Heads, or by a committee with almost no experience and but little individual responsibility. The whole thing seemed to me a mistake, and my heart sank as I thought of myself as President over our Guild, working what seemed an impossible scheme. Yet it is one of the first principles of education to let children who are not grounded properly make mistakes and so learn where they fail.’

Much happened to reconcile Miss Beale to the Settlement scheme. Miss Catherine Newman, as her sister had done ten years before in aid of poor students, volunteered to undertake the management of the work gratuitously, and to pay her own expenses. Miss Newman was an old College pupil and a member of the Guild. She was also a trained nurse, with long experience of work among the poor. Miss Newman’s offer and the appeal of her old friend, Mr. Bromby, had weight with Miss Beale. She felt less anxious about the efforts of her ‘children’ if safe-guarded by the experience of those she knew and trusted. Miss Newman could also sympathise with Miss Beale’s own disappointment and anxiety, while she was confident of her large-mindedness in this matter. This may be gathered from a letter she wrote to her in the course of the proceedings at this time:—

‘ ... It is very good of you to set aside your own wishes and to throw yourself into this scheme. I have thought many times since the corporate work was talked about, that the freedom both teachers and old pupils felt in proposing schemes of work spoke volumes for their confidence in your generosity. Several members of the Guild who felt drawn towards the mission scheme said to me, “If I thought Miss Beale would wish me to vote for the Loan Fund because it was her scheme I would do so, but I believe that she would prefer that we should think for ourselves and vote for the scheme which most commends itself to us individually.” This confidence in your generosity and sense of justice struck me greatly; they knew you too well to fear for an instant that you might resent their taking a different line, and I felt sure from all I had ever known or seen of you that their confidence was not misplaced. Had you been able to unfold your scheme to them the result might have been very different, but of course it is too late now. If we were to renounce the idea of the Home for workers in the East-end, the elementary school would certainly take its place, and I am sure that you have realised ere now that it would be unjust both to the workers and the parish in which the Settlement is made to make it a temporary thing. Either it must be the corporate work of the Guild or it must be given up altogether,—at least so it seems to me. We could not expect enthusiasm either to work or support if it might be withdrawn at any moment. As regards your scheme, dear Miss Beale, I am truly sorry that it had not really a fair chance from the accident of its not being ripe yet for publicity. Two years hence might have been soon enough, yet I need not remind you that the “corporate work” was suggested by yourself. I am not afraid to say, however, that your scheme is sure of support and success, and this I trust while your powers are still unimpaired; but if, unfortunately, your strength should oblige you to limit your useful labour before it is fairly launched, I have every confidence that your friends and “children” would look upon it as a sacred legacy, which it would be their pride and pleasure to inherit from you.’

At the very moment that the Cheltenham Settlement was about to be opened in Bethnal Green, the ladies of Oxford were prepared to start one in the same district. For the convenience of both, an arrangement was made by which the two sets of workers could live together for a time, under one head, Miss Newman, until the resources of each, and the work they were called upon to do, were better known. Mayfield House, close to St. John’s Church, was therefore taken and formally opened as a Ladies’ Settlement (at that time the second in London), on October 26, 1889. Four years later, as suddenly as her sister at Jersey House, Miss Newman died at her post. ‘What can one feel,’ wrote a friend to Miss Beale, ‘except that her death seems to seal the whole life with the heroism of service.’

This trouble was the first link in a chain of circumstances which led, in the course of three or four years, to the removal of the Settlement to Shoreditch, where it became an important branch of that work to which Miss Beale gave the title of St. Hilda’s.

CHAPTER XI
ST. HILDA’S WORK

‘Thy kindred with the great of old.’

Tennyson, In Memoriam, lxxiv.

Those who had often the advantage of hearing Miss Beale speak, either in general addresses to present or past pupils, or in the more regular course of literature lessons, soon learned that there were certain heroic names which had for her an almost romantic fascination. Among those of great women who influenced her imagination are specially to be remembered St. Hilda, St. Catherine of Siena, la Mère Angélique, Mme. Guyon. Of these the most dominant, the most inspiring was that of the great Northumbrian abbess, known to those whom she taught and ruled by the name of ‘Mother,’ not by virtue of her office, but on account of her signal piety and grace.[60] Hilda, the earnest student who ‘had been diligently instructed by learned men, who so loved order that she immediately began to reduce all things to a regular system.’ Hilda, the patron of the first English religious poet, ‘who obliged those under her to attend much to the reading of the Holy Scriptures; who taught the strict observance of justice and other virtues, particularly of peace and charity.’[61] This great Hilda and her work were to Dorothea Beale not merely romantic names, they were an ideal, an inspiration. And when the due time came, though for the sake of Miss Newman she hesitated for a moment over the alternative title of St. Margaret’s Hall, the name of St. Hilda was the one she chose to grace her own foundations. There are, possibly, members of the Ladies’ College who felt a pang of envy when the Students’ House became St. Hilda’s College. They could have borne to exchange the prim early Victorian title bestowed by the godfathers of 1856 for this more inspiring name. There is, however, consolation in the thought that the Ladies’ College is still free to adopt the name of its second founder.

St. Hilda’s Hall, as it was at first called, was formally opened on November 27, 1886; but its real building was a much longer process, even if dated only from Miss Margaret Newman’s death at the close of 1877. Miss Beale thought much and anxiously how she could best lay out the money which she and her staff and some friends had given in order that Miss Newman’s work might be carried on and enlarged. She advised with a few who cared for education and for the College. Among those who helped and counselled were Miss Soames, who subscribed largely to St. Hilda’s, and Mr. Brancker, some of whose letters on the subject remain. If there seems now to be little that is original in the suggestions and plans discussed by Miss Beale and Mr. Brancker, it is because they were to a great extent pioneers, and among the first to bring about a real system for attaining the educational objects they had at heart. In 1878 Mr. Brancker wrote:—

‘The object you advocate is a very desirable one, and one I have longed for many a time as an adjunct of the Ladies’ College—but while we were struggling upwards I could never see an opportune time to advocate my ideas on the subject. The means you suggest are very undesirable, to my mind at least, as partaking too much of the “charitable object” idea to commend themselves to me.

‘So necessary do I consider the future training of those who in their turns have to teach that for the present I should be inclined to treat every case on its own merits; as there may be many who may be anxious to get their education on such easy terms and yet have not the very least idea of imparting that knowledge to others, and in such cases the object you seek is not attained.

‘My idea, which is perhaps a crude one, would be that the capabilities of each pupil as regards teaching should be tested, and if she showed suitable powers she should be drafted into one of the boarding-houses, or if thought better into a separate house; that the fees of the College in her case be remitted, and that the expense of her board be paid all or in part by the College. That for this she should engage to become a regular teacher; that the College should have the first claim on her services, and that she should pass all the necessary examinations appointed by the College. If in a boarding-house she might assist in keeping order and authority, not as a governess but as an elder pupil,—not as a spy but by moral power, keep her position, something like a præpostor in a public school; a great deal of evil might then be prevented by being nipped in the bud. Should she eventually wish to take a College degree she should be assisted by the College if she remained with them or under their control. My great object would be to get ladies to accept such a position, as there must be many who would come within the rules of the College as to position who would be very glad to have such a vocation in prospect, and the College ought to be in a position now, unless the funds have been unnecessarily squandered, to afford to assist such cases in the hope that in the future they would help it.

‘Such are my rough ideas on the subject, as I do not believe in the isolation of those who want a practical knowledge of human nature to enable them to become teachers worth their salt.’

In a second letter on the same subject Mr. Brancker said:—

‘I quite understand what you feel about this matter relating to the governess of the future, and it was only my fear that you might be unwittingly getting into troubled waters that induced me to write you at once about it. It is a very difficult question to solve, and one that wants a good deal more thought so that no mistake may be made. My plan is to take up the idea of a “pupil teacher” in Government Schools, and from that form some plan for the education of those who aspire to be the teachers of the future. I should then carry out the idea I have always entertained of giving a preference to our own pupils, and working them up to our standard. I have always regretted that we missed Bessie Calrow, as she was a born teacher and would have delighted in the work. It seems to me that as you do not take these pupils until they are seventeen, you have a great chance among your own pupils, and would certainly know their own character better than any stranger; therefore, to any one who had passed through the College—could pass the necessary examination, and was willing to be such pupil teacher—I would pay the College fees and half the boarding-house expenses, or all if you like, and would give her a fair trial, and if at the end of twelve months, or longer as might be thought desirable, it was not satisfactory to all parties, let her depart and no harm would be done. This is a far better and more dignified position than being educated by charity; and the person enjoying it would lose nothing of her dignity, if it was not even added to by the position. If the plan is to do any good it must be grafted on to the College, and I for one should be very sorry to see that obliged to go to the public for any funds it requires to do good. I would make the pupils sign nothing on my plan, my hold upon them would be their association with the College. I can quite understand the difficulties raised by the boarding-houses about new pupils at that age, but with old ones that difficulty is at once removed; as, like the præpostors, they would have certain privileges, but at the same time they must submit to the discipline of the house. My plan may be, and no doubt is very crude, but these are the lines I should start from and feel my way tentatively, so as not to destroy the independence of the individual. Look where you get the best masters of public schools:—The man who succeeds is a scholar and very likely Fellow of his College; he may have been Bible-clerk, sizar, or undergraduate, and so has worked his way upwards and obtained his position from hard work, thus adding to his dignity and power of teaching. And I should follow as much as possible in these tracks.’

Eventually the ideas expressed in these letters were carried out in the arrangement of St. Hilda’s, which became not only a home for pupils who could not afford the normal boarding fees, but also a residence for senior students who needed more liberty than they could have in the other houses. By this means the house was put on a self-supporting basis. Miss Beale could have borne with no other. The Loan Fund, up to this time, had been the means of assisting over a hundred students. Miss Beale now asked a few personal friends to support it, pointing out that such a means of help was far better than any system of scholarships, which she never ceased to dislike, and against which she continually spoke and wrote. Her chief objections to scholarships have been already noted.[62] She was moreover opposed to the principle of material giving involved in the system. She only cared, at any time, to give what would embrace and ennoble character. She thought it best that people should pay for advantages received, thought they would value them more, thought it made girls more careful and self-denying when first the management of money came into their own hands, to feel that it was not their own to do as they pleased with. A mere gift seemed to her like a dead thing compared with the money which, lent and returned and then lent to others, was thus used over and over again. Yet the want of response to appeals for the Loan Fund must have been partly due to a difference of opinion on its method rather than to want of sympathy with Miss Beale’s aims. There are many who feel an objection to saddling with a loan a young teacher starting on her work, or who recognise that an unpaid loan may help to lower the standard in money affairs, and on that account shrink from giving help in this way. There are few indeed who could lend money so successfully as Miss Beale could, because there are few who could so successfully command repayment. Of the first £500 advanced by the Loan Fund, £495 was repaid in a very few years. The pressure she would exercise for repayment sometimes led to the wrong notion that she cared for money for its own sake. She had at all times great skill in wringing the utmost use out of a sum of money to promote those ends for which she lived; but in the ordinary commonplace sense she was indifferent to money and the things for which it is usually exchanged. Her own personal life was as bare of luxury when she was a rich woman as it was when her capital was reckoned in hundreds only. But she did care deeply for character, and anxiously avoided all forms of easy generosity which might injure those she sought to help.

For several years before a turf was cut for St. Hilda’s College, Miss Beale was, as she would herself have expressed it, building it: student teachers were being trained in the College, and in 1881 one of these passed the Cambridge Examination in the Theory and Practice of Education. Gradually she gathered an increasing body of students in a separate house—a house which was as unlike as any could possibly be to the beautiful home which was shortly to be opened. She waited year after year for money with which to build without interrupting the work she had begun in assisted education, and for the reasons named made no public appeal for it. It was enough, she maintained, to state the real needs—to show the value of a work by the way it was done—and thus let it make its own appeal for support. She had a horror of plant which might be a mere empty shell, or which in its establishment might become a diversion of energy from spiritual work. She felt this especially in the matter of church building, as may be seen in the following extract from a letter: ‘What I disapproved of was the amount of begging for the Cathedral. I do not disapprove of it, but I think you know what I felt. However, the Bishop will do all he can to make it a strong spiritual centre. I can never get over the feeling of spiritual destitution at one very beautiful cathedral.’ It was also, perhaps less consciously, a principle not to take money except from those who were willing for her to carry out her own ideas. She wrote to one friend in 1888:—

‘As regards our Students’ Home, I have given up the idea of a public meeting. It seemed not right to refuse the offer at first. But I shall go on with the work, and I doubt not the money will come. There is such a great need for training teachers. If we had a meeting things might be said and money be given in a way which would pledge us, or be thought to pledge us, and now we shall be free.’

And again in 1884 to one who helped her Oxford scheme:—

‘I grieve over that Protestant spirit which forbids people to read books, to associate with people, who do not think precisely in their way. Is this done in Science? No; we put various theories before the student and show why we accept them. But we don’t ever want to impose our beliefs; so I want not to impose mine in religion, but to bring the learner to the “fountain of living water.” Any transferred opinion is without root, and cannot endure the storm. Teachers must, if they are to help, gain the sympathy they need by entering into the religious modes of seeing and feeling of many different souls. I think in a University town they would come in contact with various influences, and in a house like St. Hilda’s I should want thoughtful people who have gone through some of the experience of life,—old teachers to help the young. There is a little more of my dream, but I am quite content to wait. If it be God’s will that such a house should grow up, the way will be pointed out. I felt I could not say all this to you when we meet, and I have got to care that you should not misunderstand me.’

As the time to begin the actual erection of the house drew near she had no exultation over the fulfilment of a dream. Yet in the beginning of August 1885, surrounded by young teachers from her own and other schools drawn together for a Retreat and a brief educational conference, her mind was naturally full of that dream. Some few of her own thoughts about it she wrote down; such as the following, with their characteristic heading:—

‘Sunday, Aug. 2, 1885—on St. Hilda’s. Some thoughts at church.

‘God fulfils Himself in many ways. Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

‘How often have we seen endowments thus rendered injurious, not helpful. So it is with many of the institutions around us. Can we hope better things from this one? No, we can only hope for it not a perfection but a temporary usefulness. “He, after he had served his generation according to the will of God, fell on sleep”;—so it is with men, so with institutions, they need not a body but a spirit. As long as the spirit lives the body is the instrument of all good works. When the spirit dies, the body becomes the source of disease and corruption. For this reason I have cared more to awaken the spirit than to gather funds and build first. The spirit will, I hope, shape the body.

‘Now what we want is a body of women whose one desire is to consecrate themselves to the ministry of teaching.

‘“Get work in this world.

‘Be sure ’tis better than what you work to get.”

‘Ye are the salt of the earth,—light of the world, said the Lord to the teachers He sent forth.’

The first stone of St. Hilda’s College was quietly laid by Canon Medd (one of the trustees and a member of the Ladies’ College Council) in 1884. The opening, which took place on November 27, 1885, was far more dignified than that its illustrious parent had known in 1856.

‘The ceremony of opening the institution,’ so ran the account in the Cheltenham Examiner, ‘which was performed by the Bishop of the diocese, took place at three o’clock, and was attended by a large and influential company, who assembled in the study, a spacious—but on this occasion none too spacious—apartment on the ground floor.’ Among those present were the Dean of Winchester,[63] then Chairman of the College Council, who conducted the short service, the late Bishop of Ely, and many of the clergy of the town, besides the friends and benefactors of St. Hilda’s. On entering the study the eye was caught at once by the words which Miss Beale quoted so often that they seemed like the motto of her work: ‘Knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up.’ Here, in this ‘Godly Place,’ as he called the house, the Bishop of Gloucester, who since 1875 had been both nominally and actually Visitor of the Ladies’ College, gave an address full of sympathy for the ideals of the founder.

Thus the first resident Training College for teachers, other than elementary, was planned, and built, and opened. In order to make its position more permanent it was constituted into a separate College with a Council of its own. In 1886 a statue of St. Hilda was presented and placed in the hall. On unveiling it, Miss Beale spoke of the Saint’s life, and especially of her work as a teacher. She concluded with a thought, the deeper for the personal touch in it, of memory of what she had had to bear in the past, and indeed in later years also, of misconception and misrepresentation.

‘Shall I touch in conclusion upon the mythical elements in St. Hilda’s story? Myths are truths expressed in poetry. You see the ammonite at her feet, one of the serpents that she, like St. Patrick, is fabled to have turned into stone. There may have been, once, at Whitby, serpents who, with the poisoned tooth of calumny and evil-speaking, wounded and slew. I think she turned them into stone with her look of sorrow. We have not represented the wild geese, whom she is said to have destroyed because they wasted her lands. I half believe that story too; I feel sure that all these disappeared from her abbey lands, but perhaps they were turned into swans.’

St. Hilda’s College was scarcely built and opened before it was necessary to enlarge it by adding a new wing. It was not until this had been done that Miss Beale felt free to devote herself to another foundation, which also was to bear the name of the sainted Abbess.

As early as the year 1882 Miss Beale, attracted by the increasing facilities offered to women by the elder universities, had purchased three acres of land in north Oxford. These she retained for building uses should the right moment or a definite reason for such a purpose occur. But no one showed much sympathy with the scheme, there was no offer of money, and for long much of her own capital was absorbed in St. Hilda’s, Cheltenham. Impulsive to a fault as she often was, Miss Beale could school herself to wait. After five years came an opportunity of purchasing a ready-made college in Dr. Child’s beautiful house on the Cherwell. It seemed well to accept this, and begin there the new house of education.

There were many reasons why Miss Beale allowed so long a time to elapse between her purpose and her act. Her own ideas and her aims for her Hall at Oxford shaped themselves but gradually. Somerville College[64] and Lady Margaret Hall were still in their first youth. Miss Beale’s scheme seemed uncalled for where there were already so many workers for the cause of women’s education in the field. Her educational experience had been different from that of those whose minds had developed among university surroundings; her methods were unacademic, unconventional. Consequently there were some to warn her as she prepared to take her new step: ‘The University may easily receive a shock from which it will take long to recover.’

It may well be asked even now, as it was often asked at the time, why Miss Beale wanted to come to Oxford at all, and particularly while she was uncertain of the value of University Examinations for women. But she valued even more than the certificate gained by taking schools the atmosphere of Oxford. She saw that the students of St. Hilda’s, Cheltenham, missed this. When she founded that institution she had written of it, that she hoped it ‘would be a Hall similar to the Halls at Oxford and Cambridge.’ Now she felt the need of what only the older universities could give. She hoped her new house might become a place of intellectual enlargement and refreshment such as Oxford could best supply to some who had already begun their work of teaching, and who needed new thoughts and inspiration, more time for thought, a higher intellectual standard. She thought that a year at Oxford could supply that feature in education which is sometimes more developed at home.

‘I have often felt ... that a year in which they should be allowed to expatiate in intellectual pastures in a way that we older women used to do before examinations for women existed, would be of great value. And they can do this best in some University town, where they can have libraries and museums and such lectures and private help as they most require—both hearing and asking questions, rather than being asked and answering.... Many could take one year who could not take three.... The students of St. Hilda’s (Oxford) will have the same opportunities of attending lectures and offering themselves for examinations as at the other Ladies’ Colleges—but we should not press examination upon any who can do better work without. Of course we must be assured that those who come to us will work seriously.’

Yet these reasons were secondary. The purchase of three acres of ground at Oxford was a definite result of her own suffering of mind in 1882. As she emerged from that she at once began to build in vision a house where teachers should be established in the faith, where they should learn to feel that their calling was not to do mere journeyman work, but to deal with the deep problems of life.

Finally, it may be added that, whether conscious of it or not, she could not keep herself out of the great movement which was enabling women to share with men many of the incomparable advantages of University life, she had also her own conception of what University life might do for women, and by means of a College at Oxford for her own College at Cheltenham. For Cheltenham the connection would be of great value. Seeing all that might be won by a well-placed move, she planned that move, waited, then made it at the right moment. ‘I bewail your news,’ wrote an Oxford friend to whom she communicated the fact that St. Hilda’s was about to be opened, ‘and disclaim all responsibility for your mistake.’ Miss Beale opened her Hall and begged the students to accept the words Non frustra vixi as their motto, that being the thought which the ammonite at the feet of St. Hilda’s statue now suggested to her.

In October 1893 seven students took up their residence at St. Hilda’s. Mrs. Burrows, who had had a College boarding-house at Cheltenham, came to be head of the new Hall, assisted by her daughter, who had been a student at Lady Margaret Hall. The house was formally but quietly opened on November 6 by the Bishop of the diocese, Dr. Stubbs, who placed himself at Miss Beale’s disposal for all arrangements. ‘I will keep,’ he wrote, ‘November 6 free for Miss Beale, but she must let me hear what, when, and how what is to be done’; and to Miss Beale, ‘You do not want me to bring robes on the 6th, do you? A line to reassure me would be grateful.’

On the occasion of the opening, after the little service conducted by the Dean of Winchester, the Bishop of Oxford spoke a few ‘grave and weighty words’ on the duty of ‘self-culture of the whole mind, soul, and spirit.’ The Dean, who thanked him for his address, said that ‘the new venture of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was by no means so ambitious as the Bishop seemed to think.’ He spoke of the way in which it might prepare women to be of real service in their generation, and added: ‘One cannot think of this opening day for the Oxford St. Hilda’s without strong emotions of gratitude and hope. This is the crown and highest result of all that work for women’s education which has been carried on under Miss Beale’s wise rule at Cheltenham these many years past; the College, with its varieties of activity, and its eight hundred students, justly claims to be represented here in the home of highest education.’

Photo. W. H. Rogers

S. Hilda’s Hall, Oxford.

Among the friends gathered for this opening ceremony was the founder of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, Canon Bellairs. He welcomed this house in Oxford, though he would have named it differently.

‘I am very glad to hear,’ he had written a month before, ‘that you are starting what will no doubt become a veritable College. You should christen it at once. St. Clare would be appropriate. She founded an Order, and your College will be the foundation of an order. I do hope the G. W. R. will alter its time-table to suit your convenience. It would do so if it had as high an opinion of your excellence as the Father of your College, and your Pupils and all that know you have. Fancy, thirty-five years since we first met! What a period for evolution.... I should like very much to have a chat with you to see where you are now.’

After five years, St. Hilda’s, Oxford, was recognised by the Association for the Education of Women in Oxford as St. Hilda’s Hall. Miss Beale finally, in 1900, connected it with St. Hilda’s, Cheltenham, by presenting it to the Association of that College.

That Miss Beale was fully alive to changes that must come in the course of time to such an institution as St. Hilda’s Hall, and could be content to see her own personal wishes set aside in everything that did not affect the essential life of the place, is clear from the following letter to Mrs. Wells in January 1903:—

‘Thanks for your nice letter and the suggestions. I think with you that the giving of scholarships will have to be reconsidered, and some clear rules made. I am, however, no less strongly opposed to the modern slave trade than before, and should be much grieved if we entered upon it. I see you would limit the giving to those who need help. Of course I see that I can no longer have the freedom I had in choosing scholars when the house was mine, and I alone was responsible for all expenses, and Mrs. Hay allowed me to dispose of her gifts, but I do hope we shall go on somewhat the same lines.

‘1. That we shall not ask for money.

‘2. That we shall not advertise in order to get scholars.

‘3. That we shall not pledge ourselves to choose merely by intellectual pre-eminence.

‘4. I think we are justified in giving the preference to Cheltenham girls.

‘Might we not say that a scholarship should be offered on certain fixed conditions to certain girls, say to associates and to those who, not having been long enough to gain this, should have taken a high rank in the Cambridge room.’

The year marked by this crown and result of labour was saddened by the death of Miss Catherine Newman at Mayfield House. It was a death which caused not only personal sorrow, but extreme perplexity and loss to all connected with the Mission. They found themselves at the end of four years’ trial of their scheme without a head, with a scattered band of workers, and an insanitary house. No one felt the sorrow of it all more than Miss Beale; no one was more courageous in meeting it. The necessary, difficult, and toilsome work which was the result of the crisis did not indeed fall to her share, but to that of some members of the committee on whom the responsibility specially pressed. But such difficulties to be met, such a death for a cause, were exactly what roused Miss Beale to feel the worth of it as she had never done before.

A small untiring sub-committee was formed, with Mrs. Batten as secretary, to re-arrange the work. The cost of efficient drainage operations was so heavy that at first it seemed better to seek a new house for the Settlement than to undertake such a great expense. A long search in the neighbourhood for such a house proved fruitless. It therefore became a question whether the Guild members should move their work from the place they had deliberately chosen at a large general meeting, or go to the expense required for making Mayfield House fit for habitation. However, an appeal to the surveyor resulted in the cost of the drainage work being thrown upon the landlord, who consequently made harder terms for his tenants. The question whether to stay or go came before the Guild in 1894, and a vote for continuing the work at Mayfield House was passed by a large majority. After an interval of some months the house was re-opened under a new Lady Warden, Miss Corbett,—no Cheltenham worker having been found to undertake it.

In her first report Miss Corbett was able to show a full complement of workers. There was no falling off, but in less than two years it became evident that a more complete change must be made. The Oxford workers, who by a temporary arrangement lived at first in Mayfield House, had now a prosperous Settlement of their own—St. Margaret’s—in the very same square as Mayfield House. This Settlement of the Ladies’ Branch of the Oxford House could not well be in any other neighbourhood. It was seen to be ludicrous that two large communities of women workers should concentrate their energies on one small corner of the vast field of London work. Added to this, the high rent and rates of Mayfield House pointed to the need of a change, and at the Guild meeting of 1896 it was definitely proposed to move either to East Ham or Lambeth. Finally, however, Shoreditch was chosen, a district having sore needs, and near enough to Bethnal Green to enable those members of the Settlement engaged there in Board School management, charity organisation, and other extra parochial work still to carry it on.

Then came the question of a house. There was none. It was clearly necessary to build, but for so large an undertaking the reserve fund was insufficient. Miss Beale, always averse to begging for money, refused to make any definite appeal for charity, but as a happy inspiration, the idea came to her that the Guild should meet the difficulty with the same kind of means used by Mrs. Grey in starting high schools in 1874. This idea took shape in February 1897. Miss Verrall, who had been Treasurer of the Settlement from the beginning, sent out notices to members of the Guild to inquire whether shares for £3000 would be taken up, and a ready response was given, all the shares being quickly appropriated within a fortnight. This, which seems to be a mere business transaction, was really a great deal more. It was rather a channel for interest and help which had been so far unable to force their way freely. The money was subscribed in the form of debenture stock at three per cent., repayable at the end of eighty years. £3800 was subscribed within a fortnight by 310 subscribers. A large part came from women to whom the sacrifice of control or recovery of the capital made it practically a gift. To most the yearly-paid few shillings of interest meant little in comparison with a few pounds available for immediate expenditure. Of the money subscribed, over £400 has now been released by gift from the holders. Other holders have authorised the Council of St. Hilda’s East to retain their interest. This brings in about £30 a year. The transaction was a fine example of Miss Beale’s use of this world’s goods, as means to great ends, and a fine instance of the response she could command from those she had led to her own point of view. Generous aid came also from Mr. Dutton, whose sister was an old Cheltonian,[65] and who undertook all the legal business gratuitously; also from the honorary architect, Mr. Philip Day, the husband of an old pupil, who volunteered his services for the new house. The workers found temporary quarters during the building, which took less than a year; and on April 26, 1898, the house was opened by Dr. Creighton, the Bishop of London, under the name of St. Hilda’s, Shoreditch. For Miss Beale remained faithful to the name and all the ideas it implied for her. On the letter of a friend who wrote, ‘Could not the new house be called Cheltenham House or some such, binding it to the College? It would be better than a picturesque saint’—she wrote, ‘I disagree.’ Mrs. Reynolds, an old pupil, became head of the Settlement during the busy time of furnishing and organisation of work in a new centre. A year later she was succeeded by another old pupil, Miss Bruce, the present Lady Warden, who had worked in the Settlement from the first. Since that time the house has twice been enlarged. The growth of the Settlement, as its beginning had been, was marked by the loss through death of an enthusiastic worker when Mrs. Moyle, who was for a time its secretary, died in July 1899.

As the permanence of the Settlement became assured, and the interest of both past and present pupils increased, being augmented by the organisation of shares, and by the formation of St. Hilda’s Association, Miss Beale’s own interest in the work grew. She regarded St. Hilda’s East less as a centre of help for the poor than as a place of training for workers. In this aspect it appealed to her as rightly an integral part of the work of the College. In the year 1898, which she said might be called for the College an annus mirabilis, she was able to point to the three institutions bearing the name of St. Hilda, each firmly established, flourishing, and full of promise of future usefulness.

‘This year St. Hilda’s, enlarged from six to sixty students, is full and free from debt.

‘This year the link with the University of Oxford, so early formed, has been made permanent by St. Hilda’s, Oxford, becoming a Hall of the University.

‘Above all, this year St. Hilda’s East has been built by the spontaneous co-operation of past and present girls, and this has specially cheered us, that those who have left us for other spheres, the Heads of other great Schools, still stretch out their hands to us, work with us in the Guild and the Mission, and the old ties are not broken.’

But the three great institutions bearing the name of St. Hilda by no means included all that thought-training work which was what Miss Beale specially associated with it.

The existence of St. Hilda’s College at Cheltenham made it convenient, if not imperative, to find exercise for the energy there inspired and directed, and to supply classes for practice. To keep this stream of energy within her own guidance for a longer period than the time of training involved, it was necessary to have scope for it at hand. Even the great and growing College was not large enough to employ all the workers it trained, and the Principal was ever alive to the necessity of having a certain number of teachers from outside, bringing with them fresh ideas and methods.

The Kindergarten was the first addition to the Ladies’ College proper to need such young helpers as Miss Beale now had at her disposal. It began, like Miss Beale’s other creations, without a local habitation of its own in 1876. The College, owing to the quick perception of its Lady Principal, who was sensitive to each fresh tendency in education, was one of the first schools in England to avail itself of the Kindergarten mistresses trained by Madame Michaelis, who began her work in her own house at Croydon as early as 1874.

Miss Beale at once secured a mistress, and on her arrival a number of little boys and girls were immediately found to constitute a Kindergarten in Miss Beale’s own drawing-room. ‘The’ drawing-room, as she always called it, did not well bear out its title. As a baby-class room it looked well. Morris’s daisy and columbine paper, then a new thing, was on the walls, to suggest the thought, which was probably correct, that in first choosing it Miss Beale had already an intention of beginning a Kindergarten, though she did not find it advisable to mention it then to the Council. Some of the younger teachers in College helped a little with this baby-class. The system and organisation, the carefully trained head, all seemed rather alarming in those days when Froebelian ideas and German methods were little known in England.

As early as 1876 there were twenty-five children in the Kindergarten, for which a classroom had to be found in the College. In 1881 Miss Welldon came to Cheltenham as head of the Kindergarten. Hers was one of the first appointments made by the Croydon Kindergarten Company, which had been founded in 1876, with Madame Michaelis as Principal.

In 1882 the new room, purposely built and fitted for a Kindergarten, was opened. It was much enlarged in 1887. But soon again more scope was needed for the large number of students who now flocked to Cheltenham. Miss Beale could not bear to let one of these escape her. She recognised their needs, she saw their possible value. There were then very few places in England where they could be trained; the demand for Kindergarten mistresses daily increased. The immediate difficulty was met in 1889 by the establishment of a Kindergarten school in connection with St. Stephen’s Church in Cheltenham, supported by the vicar of the parish and a few voluntary contributors. This was staffed by Kindergarten students of the Ladies’ College. Fifty-seven children actually appeared in the school the first day, and the numbers rapidly increased in spite of the fact that each child paid twopence weekly. Five years later College students penetrated into a still poorer school at Naunton, a hamlet adjoining the town of Cheltenham. In 1896 the infant school of the parish of Holy Trinity in the town invited teachers from the College.

In 1889 Cambray House was offered for sale. Miss Beale, who had a strong lingering affection for this first home of her school, had with regret seen it ‘alienated to barbarian boys,’ the trees cut down, and the garden turned into an asphalted playground. The building was well fitted for the school purposes for which it had been adapted and long used. There was enough space in the part which had not been altered, and which was not wanted for a day-school, to be utilised as a boarding-house. Miss Beale seized the chance she saw of opening a school which should serve the double purpose of taking overflow pupils or others for whom, for many reasons, the Ladies’ College was not suited, and of affording an opening under her own eye for some of the teachers she was training. The rules for admission, discipline, etc., were identical with those of the College. By this time, too, she saw the use of the racquet-courts and tennis-grounds. It was a great satisfaction to get back this house. She wrote of it to Miss Arnold:—

‘I dare not take any extra fatigue, as I have so much on my hands—I must try to be alone for a while. I have just bought back the old Cambray House in which I began thirty-one years ago. I want a second Miss Wilderspin, I have got to put it in order and furnish by May.... I heard Canon Body at All Saints, Margaret Street, last Friday. It was a very good sermon, and seemed to fit in well with the thoughts that came to me, as I had just got my offer for Cambray accepted, rather to my surprise.’

In 1895 Cambray was enlarged at a cost of about £2000, and in October 1897 Miss Beale, by deed of gift, made over the property to the Ladies’ College, though it was arranged that she should still continue there the school and boarding-house. Miss Beale marked this return of Cambray House, ‘enlarged and alive again with girls,’ into the possession of the College, as another notable event of the annus mirabilis.

Cambray House, on its acquisition by the College through the gift of Miss Beale, was leased to her for a nominal rent; the school and boarding-house being carried on as a private venture until 1906, when their existence was recognised in the College prospectus for the first time. Miss Beale spent another £2000 out of her own income upon additions and improvements after she had made over the house to the College. This was a large sum, but even from a financial point of view by no means wasted. In five years the profits of school and boarding-house amounted to £1000, for which Miss Beale planned further fruitful use.

Cambray School, or, to give it its true title, Cheltenham Ladies’ College School, and Cambray boarding-house, which took pupils belonging to both the new school and the College, was not the only undertaking for which Miss Beale made herself personally responsible. She also started, and placed in a good financial position, two cheap boarding-houses, St. Helen’s and St. Austin’s, and in course of time presented them to the College. Her position in regard to all these institutions was surely very unusual, not to say unique. The foundation of a school of over one hundred pupils, and of houses containing the same number of boarders, would be a respectable life’s work for many a woman. This work appears to have been only one of the many occupations Miss Beale found for the little leisure left her by the cares of the great College and its ever-multiplying interests.