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.’
[Illustration: _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.
It was perhaps primarily interest in young teachers which led Miss Beale
to join a movement made in 1897 to induce ladies to take up work in
elementary schools. Miss Beale was present at a large meeting held that
year in Westminster Town Hall, when the need and importance of this work
were set forth in speeches by the Bishop of Stepney,[66] Sir Joshua
Fitch, and others. As a result a Government Training Department was at
once formed at the Ladies’ College, and work began with seven students,
who in the same year were encouraged by addresses from Sir H. E. Oakeley,
H.M.I., and Sir Joshua Fitch. The field of practice for these students
was found in All Saints’ Schools, where there were four departments
all supplied with the best apparatus. Other schools in the town were
also glad at different times to receive these teachers. Miss Beale
became much interested in the work, and proposed to build a practising
school of her own for the elementary department of the College, engaged
a head-mistress, and bought land for building. Then in 1901 came the
regulations for local education committees, which would have put Miss
Beale’s school under local control. She therefore gave up the idea of
building and sold her land. Later regulations made her find it impossible
to continue the elementary work on the lines she wished. The Government
demands proved a fetter to one who felt she should be free to work
towards her ideal. To her mind the real progress of elementary education
in the country depended, not on the ‘introduction of new subjects of
instruction, which must impose new and burdensome labour on teachers
and children. It should be gained by the better training of teachers,
by the adoption of better methods, by a wiser economy of time, and by
showing teachers how to put more knowledge, more skill, more thought,
more love, and more enthusiasm into their work.’ The legislation of
1901 made her feel that ‘My Lords’ did not recognise these principles as
all-important; that they undervalued such an effort as she was making at
Cheltenham; that they were unjust to voluntary schools. She felt as if
she were playing an unfair game, and declined any longer to help forward
a movement of which she could not see the goal. It may be marked also
that she could never feel full sympathy for _free_ education. From this
time she again limited herself to training secondary teachers. Conditions
which made elementary training the one serious work which Miss Beale took
up only to abandon it, are indeed to be regretted. The magnificent plant,
the fine opportunities for learning and practising, such as the Ladies’
College could supply, above all the large-minded teaching, the sense of
real education which the Lady Principal would give, were thus lost to a
cause which affects the wellbeing of the whole nation.
The Secondary Training Department became a recognised division of the
College in 1885. So high a value did Miss Beale put upon this that she
wrote of the work of the mistress in whose charge it was, as ‘only second
in importance to that of the Head.’
St. Hilda’s work, using the term which Miss Beale herself would have
used, meant much more than teaching definite subjects and preparing for
examinations: it meant inspiration and the leading out of minds. It
demanded unlimited devotion to a cause. It is probable that Miss Beale
had for long cherished, and had only gradually relinquished a hope,
though she never formed any definite plan, of seeing arise out of her
work for education a body of women willing to form a teaching order.
Opposed to sisterhood schools as she was, chiefly because her ideal of
education was so high and apart, that she could not bear to see it
receive in any way a secondary place, she recognised the immense value
that some kind of rule would have, if voluntarily imposed _for the sake
of education_. In other words, while she did not like to see people
taking up teachers’ work because they were Sisters, she would have liked
to see those she inspired and trained voluntarily take upon themselves
some of the restrictions of a Sister’s life because they were teachers.
The thought may have come to her first when, in 1856 and 1858, Mrs.
Lancaster pressed her to undertake penitentiary work under rule. It
was this which led to the severity of her dress and grave demeanour at
Casterton, this which was echoed in a half-expressed wish that her staff
at Cheltenham should wear black. When, after long years of waiting, it
became her part to train women for the work of education, the aim of
inducing them to adopt a separate devoted life, with or without visible
signs of it, was ever before her.
Now that St. Hilda’s work may be witnessed in the three great
institutions bearing this name, it is of no common interest to trace Miss
Beale’s own plan for its development. The plan itself and the noble ideal
behind it are not more remarkable than the ability with which she waited,
resigned her individual fancy, and became an agent rather than an author.
The following extract (_circa_ 1884) states her first design:—
‘It is thought that a protest in act is specially needed in
these days, now that teachers are so highly paid, and that an
association of teachers who should be ready to take up any work
required, whether it was paid or not, would be able to carry on
work more effectively and continuously than an unorganised body
of women.
‘It is proposed, therefore, that after three years,—ten of
those who agree in this general principle should unite together
as members of the Society of St. Hilda,—that they should pay,
if young, into the funds of the Society whatever they earn
from that time (but keeping complete control over any invested
property), the Society providing them a fixed salary, a home
when disengaged or out of health, but holding a right to send
them out to any work which seems needed. The community may, if
two-thirds agree, reject any member on returning to her what
she has paid in, minus a fair sum for her maintenance. A member
may withdraw with half any calculated surplus of earnings over
expenditure, on giving one year’s notice. Some members might
reside permanently and assist in various ways as writers and
editors.
‘It is proposed that the members contributing the money should
form the governing body,—elect a Superior,—that the votes
should be in proportion to the money contributed. That all the
money should, after paying maintenance, be expended, after
leaving a moderate reserve fund, on providing some charitable
work, and that the members should, at the will of the Superior,
be assigned to any post she may think fit.
‘The work should be primarily teaching or assisting in some way
in educational work amongst rich or poor, specially religious
teaching, to which, it is hoped, some members will chiefly
devote themselves, _e.g._ by lectures, by corresponding with
those who need advice or help in religious matters, opening the
house to receive as visitors any who need a time of quiet and
retreat doing mission work at home and abroad. There should be
only a very simple rule to be signed by the workers. Prayer at
morning, evening, and midday; and such special rules as seem
desirable. A holiday in proportion to the character of the
work. The dress should be simple, but not conspicuous, and some
badge should be worn by the members.’
In this connection it is interesting to read this extract from a letter
written to a teacher who was unsettled as to her vocation, and was
contemplating entering a sisterhood:—
‘_April 89._
‘I was much interested in your letter. I feel strongly that
when in God’s Providence we have been trained for one work,
we should not lightly turn to another. As you say, there is
more scope in a large sisterhood. Miss —— is very happy at
Clewer. Still, I think the rules of an ordinary sisterhood are
difficult to combine with the life of a teacher. I cannot help
thinking that out of the Society of the Holy Name may grow up
a somewhat freer teaching sisterhood.... I hold strongly that
there ought to be some women, whose energies should be devoted
to sending out young teachers, with a true sense of their
vocation. You have gifts as a teacher; you ought not, it seems
to me, to bury them....’
Among the women whose saintly lives were a source of inspiration to
Dorothea Beale, there was one whose acquaintance (so to speak) she did
not make until herself in mature life. None the less did the name of Mary
Astell become a thought of encouragement and hope to one whose heart
was ever fresh. When in 1890, after various unsuccessful experiments,
a properly managed house was opened for the regular teachers in the
College, Miss Beale named it Astell House, after the lady who, in the
reign of Anne, put forth ‘a plan of a College for the higher education
of woman, which should be at the same time a religious house. The ladies
were to spend some time in study as well as prayer, Mrs. Astell holding
that they had as much right as men to improve their minds.... Their
special work was to be the education of girls of the higher class, and
also, if their means would admit, of the daughters of poor gentlemen,
who must otherwise remain untaught.... Mrs. Astell’s scheme aroused
considerable interest, and an unnamed lady (supposed to be the Queen)
was ready to give £10,000 for the foundation of such an institution;
but Bishop Burnet, who seems to have been consulted in the matter, put
an end to the plan, saying it would be too much like a nunnery.’ Miss
Beale certainly wanted a nunnery no more than did the timorous Bishop. As
time went on she cared less for the outward shape the spirit she strove
to foster might adopt; but she grew more and more earnest and active in
seeking to influence young teachers to become serious and high-minded
and self-sacrificing. The Quiet Days, which were instituted chiefly to
this end, affected many wholly outside the College. They are therefore
better mentioned in connection with those other interests which, to
borrow her own nomenclature in the Magazine, may be included under the
title of ‘Parerga.’