INTERESTS, HONOURS, AND A JOURNEY.
“Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle to right the wrong.
Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she:
Give her the glory of going on and still to be.”
--TENNYSON.
Those who are called to a great work often pass through times of
darkness, during which they lose for a time their vision of the eternal
realities which have meant everything to them. Dorothea Beale about the
middle of her work at Cheltenham passed through such an experience.
With weak health and clouded faith she strove, however, to live in the
spirit of Matthew Arnold’s lines--
Tasks in hours of insight willed
May be through hours of gloom fulfilled,
and only a few intimate friends knew what she suffered at this time.
A few extracts from her journal at this time show something of the ups
and downs of her illness, and the courage with which she fought what
at first she did not realise to be illness. Her diary of 1878 contains
many such entries as:--
_February 26._--I have idled away precious time, neglected individual
work. Because my own will is weak I could not strengthen [another].
_February 27._--In bed all day. There are duties still undone though I
see death near.
_February 28._--Not in college. Much time wasted and [I was]
disobedient to the voice of duty.
_March 15._--A little more work for my children to-day. I thank Thee
for some help. May I consecrate time and energies to Thee.
_April 5._--Tried, but not successfully, with my Confirmation
children. Feeling too ill to do well. Thy Will be done.
In 1882 she passed through a time of great darkness and depression,
but she finally won through as one of her indomitable spirit was bound
to do.
When this experience had passed Dorothea Beale had changed. Her
religion had become more spiritual; her knowledge of other souls more
intimate; her desire to help those passing through similar experiences,
intense. One of the immediate results of her time of difficulty was
the starting of Quiet Days or Retreats for teachers at Cheltenham at
the end of the summer term, alternatively with the biennial Guild
meetings. To her, a teacher’s work was first and foremost spiritual;
and she realised the need of times of refreshment and re-establishment
in the faith for those who are continually “giving out”. The Quiet Days
she established proved a great help to many teachers from all parts,
and her letters to old pupils and others passing through times of
difficulty reveal a great insight only given by personal experience.
To her friend, Miss Belcher, she wrote:--
“We were all so full of hope at first and are much disappointed that
relief has not come; ... I think, perhaps, you may be specially
suffering for one, that her faith may be once more awakened. Every
sufferer thus ‘lifted up’ does in a measure draw the hearts of others
to Him through whom we are able to reveal the power of faith.”
To another she wrote:--
“I have just heard of this fresh trouble. Surely you must be intended
to do some work for others specially needing heart’s blood. This paper
was put into my hands just as I heard of your fresh disappointment and
anxiety.”
The mediatorial and purifying purpose of suffering is an idea
frequently found in her writing. The South African War was a great
burden on her mind. In 1900 she wrote:--
“It is difficult to keep up one’s active powers with this nightmare;
one is so sure that all suffering is intended to be purifying and we
must glorify God in the fires.”
Dorothea Beale always had a great objection to desultory work, and
though she of necessity touched many interests wider than those of
Cheltenham, she kept the main part of her time and strength for her
own particular work. Her association with various enterprises was
always greatly valued, and her work and influence were felt to be a
great help. Some of the educational work in which she was specially
interested and took a part was represented by the Head-Mistresses’
Association, the Teachers’ Guild, the Froebel Society, the Child Study
Association, the Parents’ National Union, and Sunday Schools. She
would send delegates from the College to consider any new educational
system. A local institution that always claimed her sympathy was a
Working Men’s College started at Cheltenham and greatly helped by her
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Owen. She read a paper there on one occasion, on
self-support and self-government.
“I do not think there are many,” she said, “belonging to this College,
who could not pay a few shillings annually. Self-denial adds value
to energy.... Everybody does not agree with me. Some think you will
misunderstand--think we do not want to help. I do not think you will;
to judge by my own feelings I like to be independent.”
Then she spoke of the early difficulties at the Ladies’ College and the
lack of money during her first years there.
“I am quite sure,” she went on, “that our College would not have been
what it is if we had had money to fall back upon. I might myself have
left the helm and gone to sit quietly in the cabin while the vessel
drifted on to the rocks.”
Dorothea Beale kept throughout life a youthfulness of outlook which
made her able to enthuse over things that strongly attracted her
attention and interest. One day some one brought to her on a lily-leaf
a dragon-fly emerging from the pupa. To her mind, as to Mrs. Gatty’s,
this became a symbol of the resurrection. All that summer the college
heard much of the thought it had suggested, and many were the
“transformations” witnessed. She wrote a paper--“Is Death the End?”
and wanted to read it at a little mission maintained by her friends,
Mr. and Mrs. Owen. They would not allow her to do so, though she was
perfectly sure she would be able to interest the poor people. This
reminds the writer of a similar incident. A lady had given what she
believed to be a thrilling lecture on the dragon-fly to a number of
East End girls. They listened most attentively and seemed greatly
interested. But the lecturer’s self-satisfaction received something of
a shock when at the end she heard one girl say to another in a very
Cockney accent, “Why, it’s nothing but a fly, after all!” Probably Mr.
and Mrs. Owen were right.
Dorothea Beale was not directly interested in missionary work until
the year 1883, when Pundita Ramabai was sent by the Wantage Sisters
to study at Cheltenham College. Under her influence she studied Hindu
religion and philosophy, and became greatly concerned about the
condition of widows in India. When Ramabai established her Home for
Widows at Mukti, Dorothea Beale became a regular and large subscriber.
Among her papers was found an appeal evidently intended to reach the
minds of educated Hindus.
“My heart,” she wrote, “is stirred by sorrow and pity for those
suffering widows of India; but there are some whom I pity more--those
who inflict the sorrow on them, since it is far better to suffer than
to do wrong.... But what grieves me, too, is the thought of the waste
of all that wonderful amount of energy and life that God has given your
country-women in order to bless others.
“If the men of India believe in God’s goodness and wisdom, as I think
they must, even though they may not trust Him, they must think He has
not made all those widows to be a burden and a misery to themselves and
others, but to do good work. What mistakes people make when they think
they are wiser than God.
* * * * *
“I can remember when ‘Old Maid’ was a term of contempt in England, but
it is not so now; you have seen me and sixty old maids working together
happy and content, and if I could send out a hundred women where I
can now send one, I should not have too many, so constant are the
demands for ‘old maids,’ as you would call them--for teachers, nurses,
missionaries, and all sorts of good work.... India will some time feel
all that her wasted women’s life can do.”
With regard to missionary work for girls, she was always afraid lest
the glamour and romance of it should tempt them away from obvious
duties at home.
Dorothea Beale, perhaps because of her early acquaintance with Mrs.
Lancaster’s work, was always ready to support any agencies for the
protection of girls and women. As far back as ’86 she wrote:--
“I would ... urge the formation of a body of women-policemen who could
safely do work which could not be undertaken by men-policemen or
clergymen. These should undertake to watch over registries for women,
shops where women work, to establish labour registers themselves and
take care that women were not paid starvation wages; to enter (under
protection) suspected houses; to watch railway stations, shops,” etc.
She was always anxious for the vote to be granted to women, knowing
that many reforms were impossible without it. She was saddened by Mr.
Balfour’s Education Bill of 1902, feeling that by the abolition of
School Boards on which women had been well represented, the cause of
the vote had received a serious “set-back”.
Many other causes received her sympathy and financial help. Agnes
Weston’s work among sailors always appealed to her, as did also all
efforts to set discharged prisoners on their feet again. She had, too,
a warm spot in her heart for sufferers of her own class, impoverished
women teachers and other workers.
Dorothea Beale never cared much for prizes. She felt that the work
ought to be done for the work’s sake, as it indeed was at Cheltenham.
There were prizes given on the examination results and standards
reached, but these were simply fetched by the prize-winners from the
secretary’s room at the beginning of the next term. No emphasis was
laid upon them and they were rather an acknowledgment of good work than
something to be striven for.
The College itself did little to attract public attention. It had no
speech-day to draw celebrities to it, and went on year after year
unnoticed save by those associated with it, and those who had a real
interest in education.
In the eighties, however, outside people began to honour the College in
various ways. John Ruskin was one of the first to do so, by presenting
it with some beautiful old manuscripts and printed books. He often
criticised the College Magazine. On one occasion he hurt the editor
deeply by criticising the verses of a dear friend. To her protest he
replied:--
“DEAR MISS BEALE,
“I am grieved very deeply to have written what I did of your dead
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 women’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 little later:--
“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 yours,
“J. R.”
In 1889 and 1900, the Ladies’ College won gold medals for its
educational exhibits at the Paris Exhibitions. In 1894 Dorothea
Beale was called to give evidence before another Royal Commission
for inquiring into the condition of girls’ schools. In 1897, the
Empress Frederick visited the college, and in 1899 Princess Henry of
Battenberg, the latter to unveil a marble bust of Queen Victoria.
In the year 1898 there was an outbreak of smallpox in England. It was
particularly bad in Gloucestershire, and five times it broke out in
Cheltenham.
“Cheltenham,” says Mrs. Raikes, “largely owed its immunity to the
exertions of the Lady Principal, who insisted on re-vaccination where
it was necessary for every one connected with the college. This meant
not only teachers, pupils, servants, but all who had to do with any
college girl in any capacity--all in the homes of the day-pupils--all
in the shops which served the boarding-houses--the whole railway staff
at the different stations. The College custom was too good to lose and
she carried her point. Such a drastic measure had its comic side, as
was perceived by the saucy butcher boy, who shouted to a boarding-house
cook, “I must know if you are vaccinated before I deliver this meat”.
The father of a girl who had an important examination in a few weeks
refused to allow her to be vaccinated. The Head refused to keep her,
and a cab was actually at the door to take her away when a telegram
came from the girl’s father--“May do as she pleases”--which took away
the necessity for the cab.
For personal honours Dorothea Beale cared not at all, but she valued
them because they reflected glory on the College. Towards the end of
her life many honours were bestowed upon her. She was greatly honoured
at the International Congresses of Education held in Paris in 1889.
Later she was made Officier de l’Académie, and in 1890, the Société
des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes held its meeting at Cheltenham.
Durham University next conferred upon her the distinction of Tutor in
Letters. In 1898 she was elected a Corresponding Member of the National
Educational Association, U.S.A. An honour unusual for a woman was
conferred on Dorothea Beale, in 1901, when she received the freedom of
the Borough of Cheltenham. In the words of the Town Council resolution
it was decreed:--
“That in recognition of the great work she has done for the education
of women in England, and especially of the unique position to which
under her direction the Cheltenham Ladies’ College has attained among
the educational institutions of the country, Miss Dorothea Beale be,
in pursuance and exercise of the Honorary Freedom of the Boroughs’
Act, 1885, admitted to the Honorary Freedom of this Borough.”
Dorothea Beale in her reply said:--
“To invite a woman to be a Freeman of a town is, I venture to believe,
an expression of the thought that not the individual, but the family
with its twofold life, is the true unit and type of the State, that
social and civil and national prosperity depend on the communion of
labour, and that the ideal commonwealth is realised only in proportion
as the dream of one of our poets is fulfilled, and men and women
‘Walk this world
Yoked in all exercise of noble ends.’”
Shortly after this she was co-opted a member of the Advisory Board of
the University of London.
The highest honour Dorothea Beale received came in 1902. It was an
invitation from the University of Edinburgh to receive the LL.D.
degree. Her students and staff were delighted, and the latter
determined to present her with her robes. These were the most beautiful
and costly they could procure. The degree was conferred in the McEwan
Hall of the University. Others who received the degree at the same time
were the Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Alverstone), Mr. Asquith,
Mr. Austin Dobson, Sir John Batty Tuke, and Dr. Rucker, Principal of
the University of London. Only once before had the University conferred
this honour on a woman.
Sir Ludovic Grant in summing up Dorothea Beale’s claim to a national
recognition gave an excellent epitome of her work:--
“No feature of the national progress during the last fifty years is
more remarkable than the revolution which has transformed our girls’
schools from occidental zenanas into centres of healthy activity. In
the great crusade which has been crowned with this most desirable
consummation the foremost champion was the cultured and intrepid
lady who guides the destinies of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. It
was largely due to Miss Beale’s indomitable advocacy on platform and
on paper, that the barriers of parental prejudice were broken down,
that the ancient idols, venerated by a former generation--Mangnall,
Pinnock, and Lindley Murray--were shattered, and that barren catechism
and lifeless epitome were compelled to give place to fructifying
studies, and the futile promenade to invigorating recreations. I need
not remind you that Miss Beale’s apostolic ardour is equalled by her
administrative abilities. When she went to Cheltenham her pupils were
counted by tens: to-day they are to be counted by hundreds, and the
institution in respect of organisation and educational efficiency will
bear comparison with the best of the great English public schools.
Among the collateral benefits resulting from the great movement for
the higher education of women, in which Miss Beale has played so
conspicuous a part, not the least important is the power which the
Scotch Universities have obtained of conferring their honorary degrees
upon women, and therefore it is with no ordinary satisfaction that
the University of Edinburgh now exercises this power by begging Miss
Beale’s acceptance of an honour which has been brought within the reach
of her sex largely through her own endeavours.”
She wrote to the Vice-Principal a delightful account of the ceremony,
which she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed.
“I am persuaded,” said she, “that my robes were far superior to any
other.” From Edinburgh she went to Glasgow where she found herself in
the midst of “Old Girls”.
“We are often in spirit in Cheltenham,” wrote she, “and I must send
you a few last words to wish you all very happy holidays.... On Monday
a large number of distinguished people were invited to meet us, and
yesterday afternoon we had a party of about thirty Cheltonians. In the
evening we dined with Professor and Mrs. George Adam Smith. I sat next
to Professor Jones, who has written a book on Browning, and on the
other side was the Rector, Dr. Story.... I think we shall come back
refreshed and with some new ideas.”
She went from Glasgow to stay with other old pupils in Scotland,
then to Newcastle, where she was asked to launch a ship. She
evidently thought this would be a very damp proceeding and arrived
in india-rubber shoes and a dress thoroughly looped up. “Much as she
disliked adventure,” says Mrs. Raikes, “she was prepared to march into
the Tyne if the glory of the Ladies’ College demanded it.”
This three weeks’ tour she thoroughly enjoyed, and came back refreshed
and strengthened and warmed in heart by the love and kindness of her
“Old Girls” and the appreciation shown her everywhere.
In the autumn of 1902 she was compelled to give up work for a time. Her
sight was causing anxiety and she was not allowed either to read or
to write. Miss Berridge went with her to Bath and wrote of their life
together:--
“We brought with us Adam Smith’s work on the “Minor Prophets” and
also Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”. At first we stuck to the “Prophets,”
but at last Jane got a hearing and since then she has utterly
ousted the “Prophets”. It has been rather amusing to note how many
excellent reasons there were for giving Jane the preference. Miss
Beale was--tired--or sleepy--or not very well and could not attend
to anything that required thought, or it was near lunch--or tea--or
supper-time and therefore it was not worth while, etc., etc., and I
think she has really liked the story very much.... Miss Beale is very
much better, though of course far from being her former energetic self.
But we have still more than a fortnight before us and if she makes as
much progress in that time as she has done in the fortnight just gone,
we may be very well satisfied.”
She recovered wonderfully and was back at her work at the end of term.
But from this time she seems to have realised the need for greater care
of her health and the next summer she took a “Kur” at Oeynhausen.
It was about this time that those who knew and loved Dorothea Beale
began to realise that some day the great Head would be removed and
that there was no worthy memorial of her: no portrait which would
remind her “children” of their school mother, and would speak to future
generations of the Foundress to whom they owed so much.
The Council first approached her through their chairman, Sir Samuel
Johnson. She suggested in reply that Miss Stirling, who had a modelling
class at the College, should model her portrait in clay or terra-cotta.
After this the Council’s request took the form of a resolution. To
this Dorothea Beale replied that she had a very great objection to a
portrait of herself being hung up during her life: that it would use up
funds needed for improvements in the College, and that it would give
people an exaggerated idea of the work that she had been allowed to do
for the College.
Again she suggested that Miss Stirling should make a model in clay,
which could be executed in stone by Mr. Martyn.
The final appeal was made by the Guild meeting of 1902, after which
Dorothea Beale surrendered, and allowed her portrait to be painted by
Mr. J. J. Shannon. In her reply to those who were so desirous of having
a worthy memorial of their revered and loved Principal, she said:--
“The unbiassed artist represents his subject as she is, not as she
seems to be to those who are good enough to overlook her defects and
love her in spite of them.”
Whilst the Principal was sitting for Mr. Shannon, various friends
read aloud to her. “Lorna Doone” was one of the books. It “amused the
painter,” Dorothea Beale said.
The portrait, a very attractive one, was presented by the Duchess of
Bedford on November 8, 1904. In Dorothea’s Beale’s reply, she said that
she looked on the desire for a portrait as one not for a person but for
a Principal, a representative who would live on long after the person
had passed away. The illuminated book containing the names of the
donors she looked upon as a personal gift.
The College Jubilee celebrations were held in May, 1905. Lord
Londonderry opened a large new wing for science teaching, and
well-known people spoke at this gathering, which was the only public
Commemoration the college had had.