AT QUEEN’S COLLEGE.
“Can you remember ... when the great things happened for which you
seemed to be waiting? The boy, who is to be a soldier--one day he
hears a distant bugle: at once he knows. A second glimpses a bellying
sail: straightway the ocean path beckons to him. A third discovers a
college and towards its kindly lamp of learning turns young eyes that
have been kindled and will stay kindled to the end.”--JAMES LANE ALLEN.
The opening of Queen’s College marked a great advance in the cause
of girls’ and women’s education. It had its root in the Governesses’
Benevolent Institution, which was founded for the purpose of helping
governesses in times of need. This was originated by the Rev. C.
G. Nicolay, but in the year 1843 the Rev. David Laing, vicar of
Holy Trinity Church, Kentish Town, was made honorary secretary.
It was he who first saw that an institution that existed merely
to relieve distress was unsatisfactory, and sought to establish,
rather, an organisation to prevent the need for relief. Accordingly,
he established a Registry for Teachers, and set on foot a scheme
for granting diplomas. The latter naturally led to the starting of
examinations, which revealed such appalling depths of ignorance in
those who were supposed to instruct others, that the need for their
tuition was realised.
As is always the case in great movements many were thinking along the
same lines, and Miss Murray, Maid of Honour to the Queen, was at this
time meditating the starting of a College for Women, and was, as a
matter of fact, collecting funds for this purpose. As soon, however,
as she heard of Mr. Laing’s plans she handed over to him the money she
had collected. He consulted with the government about the establishment
of this college, and the Queen graciously allowed it to be named after
herself. A house in Harley Street, next door to the Governesses’
Benevolent Institution, was taken. Professors from King’s College were
asked to give lectures, and to many women for the first time higher
education became a possibility.
The committee, as at first constituted, included such well-known people
as Charles Kingsley, Sterndale Bennett, John Hullah, F. D. Maurice, and
R. C. Trench. It is still possible to see in book form the lectures
which inaugurated the work undertaken by Queen’s College. Though it
originated with the idea of helping governesses who wished to qualify
for their work, it numbered among its earliest students girls who were
to play an important part in many ways in the life of the nation. Among
the first pupils were Miss Buss, Adelaide Ann Proctor, Miss Jex-Blake,
and Dorothea Beale. At first there were no women lecturers or women
teachers, but many women offered their services as chaperones, and very
faithful they were in carrying out their trying and exacting duties.
The name of the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice will always be
associated with the founding of Queen’s College. Perhaps the name means
little to men and women of our generation, though he was not only a
great thinker but one of the pioneers of those who apply Christian
standards to social life. He founded a Working Men’s College, which
is still in existence, and took a great part in the work of Queen’s
College. He was compelled to resign his chair of theology at King’s
College, on account of his unorthodox beliefs, especially on the
question of eternal punishment. Throughout his life he suffered much
from charges of heresy, but he exercised a great influence on the
religious life of his day, and on that of subsequent generations. He
denounced any political economy based on selfishness, declaring it to
be false: the Cross, not self-interest, must be the ruling power of
the Universe. His lecture at the opening of Queen’s College was a most
inspiring one, and his words must have fallen on the ears of some of
the girls who listened to him like a call to high and noble service.
“The vocation of a teacher,” said he, “is an awful one: you cannot do
her real good, she will do others unspeakable harm, if she is not aware
of its usefulness.” He spoke against the harm done by simply providing
her with necessaries. “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 ribands.” He went on to speak with
great decision about the need of a thorough education for those whose
special work was “to watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the
first dawnings of intelligence: how thoughts spring into acts, how acts
pass into habits”.
It was probably about this time that Dorothea began to see what her
life-work was to be, and the noble inspiring words of this great
servant of God doubtless did much to strengthen in her mind the sense
of being called to high service. All through her career there is no
thought more marked than that of the loftiness of a teacher’s work.
From herself as well as from others of her calling she demanded that
consecration of body, mind and spirit without which there can be no
good work done. All who have read her “Addresses to Teachers,” and
other works on teaching, realise the high level on which she placed
the teacher’s calling, and the stress she laid on the need to pursue
continuously impossible ideals of goodness and efficiency.
“All of us have to begin and we live in the intimate consciousness of
this thought: Here is a child of God committed to my care, I am to help
in so developing him in time that he may be a dweller in the eternal
world here and hereafter. I, too, must live an eternal life, in order
that I may draw forth that consciousness in him. I must behold the Face
of the Father, and so become a light to my children that, seeing the
light shine in me, they may glorify that Father.”[1]
[1] “Addresses to Teachers,” I, by Dorothea Beale.
Queen’s College was the greatest boon to Dorothea Beale. It gave
her the chance of getting first-rate teaching in Mathematics and
Greek. With Mr. Astley Cook she read, privately, Trigonometry, Conic
Sections, and Differential Calculus. Soon after she was asked to teach
Mathematics and became the first lady Mathematical tutor. As a teacher
she could, _ex officio_, go to any class she liked, and attended at
different times lectures on Latin, Greek, Mental Science, and German.
One of her chief friends at this time was a girl of her own age,
Elizabeth Alston. The two used to study together, Elizabeth teaching
Dorothea singing, whilst her friend taught her to read the New
Testament in Greek. In later life she realised how much these singing
lessons had done for her, enabling her to use her voice without fatigue
for hours together.
Training colleges for elementary school teachers were established
before there was anything of the kind for the teachers of better class
children, and it was the head of the Battersea Training College who
examined the candidates and awarded the diplomas for knowledge of
methods of teaching.
At Queen’s College Dorothea Beale began to show signs of where her
power as a teacher would lie. Throughout life it was one of her
leading ideas that a teacher should be primarily an inspirer of her
pupils: that though she should never cease to prepare her work with
the greatest care, her aim should be chiefly to kindle the enthusiasm
that would make her pupils eager to learn for themselves. Even at this
early age she seems to have possessed this faculty, and long after she
left Queen’s College, she occasionally received letters from her former
pupils, saying how much her teaching had meant to them.
Her time there, however, was not to be long. There arose difficulties
which she felt could not be tolerated. These were, briefly, that one
particular person had too much authority, while the women visitors had
too little, and what they had was gradually diminishing. This led to
many evils, notably the promotion of children into the upper section,
or college, from the lower section, or school, long before they were
able to derive any benefit from advanced tuition.
Dorothea Beale returned from a summer holiday abroad in 1856 to find
these difficulties worse than ever. She and a friend thereupon sent in
their resignations, hoping to be able to avoid giving any explanation.
Dr. Plumptre, the Head, was, however, extremely anxious for her to
reveal the reason for her withdrawal, which she did very reluctantly.
After hearing her reasons for leaving, he acknowledged that she was
acting in accordance with her conscience and was trying to do what she
held to be her duty. Dorothea Beale throughout her life seems to have
had to fight against an impetuosity of nature which was in curious
opposition to that greatness of mind that enabled her to wait for
the carrying out of any great project. Her action in this connection
was characteristically impetuous, for before the correspondence was
concluded, she had accepted the post of Head Teacher at Casterton
School.
Already we find that she had formulated some of the educational
theories she held through life. One of these, which she mentioned in
her letter to Dr. Plumptre, was that girls can be thoroughly educated
only by women: that though some classes may be taken profitably by
men, the education of girls as a whole must be in the hands of their
own sex. She showed also her appreciation of the need for thorough
groundwork, without which no advanced work can be well done.
Though her action in this matter was characteristically impetuous, and
that of a young idealist, it revealed that strong sense of duty which
would not allow her to shrink from any painful experience, if the doing
of right was involved.
Dorothea Beale, probably because she was one of a big family of girls,
was apparently spared one of the most perplexing problems of modern
girls and women. From the moment when she felt herself called to the
work of teaching she seems to have had no doubt that she was right to
obey the call, and was thus saved the torment of the woman worker who
is haunted by the thought of home needs unfulfilled. The only daughter
in a home, who feels herself called to work outside it, has one of the
most difficult of life’s problems to face. She has the knowledge that
an ageing father and mother need her, that, perhaps, she will have by
and by to earn her own living, and has in her heart the incessant call
of the work that claims her. There is no one solution to a case of
this kind: every case must be judged independently. It is a difficulty
as inherent as sex or any other vital part of life, and needs to be
honestly and frankly faced. To most girls in this position, I should
say: Get your training early, whilst your parents are still strong and
well, so that if the opportunity of doing work comes you may be ready.
Some girls who live in big towns are able to combine home duties with
outside work: though on those who are not strong this life of twofold
duty is often a great strain. Others, less fortunately placed, realise
that the two are alternatives, the choice must be made, and the more
imperative duty accepted. In this connection it is well to realise, I
think, that the harder duty is not _of necessity_ the right one. The
work one dislikes is not necessarily the work one ought to undertake,
though it may be. The attitude of many religious people in the past
has, I think, been quite wrong in this respect. God has given to all of
us special talents and aptitudes, in the exercise of which we find our
greatest happiness and do our best work. To believe that the Creator
always calls us to do the uncongenial task is, to my mind, to mock His
plans. If, however, the beloved task has to be deferred, and the need
of our loved ones claims us, there comes with the accepted duty peace
and rest of mind, and the waiting time may be used for preparation of
mind, heart, and character. To many men and more women, who have kept
before them the vision of the work they would do, has often come in a
quite unforeseen way an opportunity of doing it: and they have realised
how much richer and better their life is for their wider experience
during the time of waiting.