SOME CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEAS.
“Universal History ... is at bottom, the History of the Great Men who
have worked here.”--CARLYLE.
Dorothea Beale is one of the few people to whom we can apply the
adjective great. As one reads the story of her life this quality is
very clearly marked. She was great in her thoughts, great in her plans,
great in her deeds. It is impossible to define greatness, but it is a
quality that is easily recognisable by those who have the power to see.
She had a well-balanced brain, an extremely desirable possession in
an educationalist. Whether she would have done superlatively good
work in one subject, had she specialised, it is impossible to say,
but she certainly did extremely good work in many subjects--History,
Mathematics, Philosophy, Languages--to mention only a few. Such
all-round capacity is very valuable in a Head Mistress, as it enables
her to judge fairly the teaching that is being given in almost every
subject. Intellectually she was abnormally active: rest was to her an
impossibility, and up to the end of her life she kept this marvellous
mental energy. The amount of work she was able to do was prodigious:
her administrative duties, her teaching, her literary essays--she wrote
a considerable amount--her vast correspondence, implied a mass of work
that few people could get through. Her great powers made it rather
difficult for her to understand people of limited capacity, though she
tried to do so. Dorothea Beale was a great organiser. Teachers who
went to the Ladies’ College from other schools were amazed at the
perfect organisation, and were greatly impressed by the way in which
Dorothea Beale kept in touch with everything. She was like a centre to
which were attached invisible wires from every girl and every teacher.
One of her leading ideas was to work through her staff. She knew she
could accomplish infinitely more with their sympathy and help than by
trying to do things herself. A piece of advice she frequently offered
to her teachers was to get others to do anything they could, so as to
leave their own energies for the essential part of their work, the part
that no one else could do. The doctrine of conservation of energy she
preached much to her staff. She dreaded for them the exhausting effect
of even too much enthusiasm. Holidays, she said, were to be used for
the refreshment of body, mind, and soul: and she advised them to avoid
anything that might impair their health.
Her humour was subtle and not always understood. She frequently said
most humorous things with a perfectly grave face, so that people who
did not understand her often quoted her jokes to prove her lack of
humour. One day she said to the girls that she believed her friend,
Mr. X., always made a plan of learning poetry while he shaved, and she
commended it to them as a practice they should all immediately follow!
As life went on, I believe, Dorothea Beale became rather unpractical in
personal matters, and when she had to do things for herself did them
with difficulty. Happily she usually had some one to look after her.
“I had a great deal of talk with her,” wrote one of her Old Girls, “at
one of the Head Mistresses’ Conferences, and I remember her giving me
such an amusing account of her attempts to blow up an air-cushion for
herself, that we both laughed until the tears ran down our faces.”
At the age of sixty-seven Dorothea Beale took to cycling. At first
she attempted a bicycle, but this was somewhat difficult at that
advanced age, so she took the advice of her friends and rode, instead,
a tricycle. Most mornings about seven o’clock she was to be seen riding
along the Cheltenham streets. “The milkmen know how to keep out of my
way,” she used laughingly to say. The tricycle was a source of great
pleasure to her, as it enabled her to get out easily and quickly into
quiet country, where she could enjoy the beauty and solitude of nature.
Her writing became rather illegible, though in youth it was good. There
is a story told of her which sounds to me rather the kind of anecdote
that is applied to different people in succession. After a Scripture
class a girl received back a written exercise with a remark by Dorothea
Beale at the end. The girl gazed at the remark, looking at it in every
possible way, but could not decipher it. The book was handed round the
class, but no one could read the red-ink hieroglyphics. Finally some
genius hit on the interpretation--“Write legibly!”
The living monument of Dorothea Beale’s work is a testimony to her
greatness of soul, her patience and her power to wait. Yet, curiously
enough, she was in smaller things often very impetuous: sometimes she
forgot decisions made hastily and difficulties ensued.
All her life Dorothea Beale had to fight against extreme sensitiveness
and shyness. She, who never shrank from any duty, however difficult,
often shrank from the society of those who might be unsympathetic,
and was sorely wounded by adverse criticism. Yet in a larger sense,
she did not trouble about the judgment of others, accustomed as she
was throughout life to submit herself to a Higher Judge. She found
it difficult to make advances to other people and always welcomed
the fearless, happy girls who ventured to treat her as a comrade and
friend. No doubt this sensitiveness helped her much in her dealings
with others. It gave her the power of sympathising, especially in times
of sorrow and difficulty: one has only to read some of her letters to
see how powerful she was in this way. A few extracts will illustrate
this point:--
“I need not tell you I have felt much for you. One could not have
wished the suffering prolonged, and yet one does not feel the loss
less. Happily, one seems generally to forget, when all is over, the
last painful incidents of the sickness, and to remember the past years.
Few have had a more devoted mother. How proud she was of your success!”
To another, on her father’s death:--
“I must write you one line of sympathy in this great sorrow. I know how
much you loved your dear father and had longed for this visit, and now
there will be a great blank. You will not think now, ‘how glad he will
be if I do well’.”
To one going through great spiritual struggle:--
“Indeed, dear child, I do feel for you. When you are freer you must
come and see me and we will talk over things. I shall not think you
wicked but believe that you do want to know God, and that He is sorry
for you because you do care, but cannot see.”
To her dear friend, Miss Belcher, when the latter was suffering from
the illness which was to bring the end:--
“I am looking forward to Friday. I thought of you so much on this the
Physician’s [St. Luke’s] day as we sang that beautiful Hymn and Psalm
xxx: and our window told of the raising of the daughter by the Healer.”
Dorothea Beale presented the perhaps not unusual combination of the
practical woman of affairs and the mystic. Her business capacity and
power of organisation were remarkable, and yet she had essentially the
mind of a poet. Hers was the type of mind that is continually seeing
a revelation of the spiritual in all material things, in history, in
literature, and in sympathy with kindred souls.
Her Scripture lessons she considered one of the chief parts of her
work. She always took the greatest care with her preparation for these
classes and made them the subject of prayer. Some used to complain that
her lessons were vague, and not intelligible, but even those who did
not understand felt a greatness and an uplifting power which were a
help to them.
In 1880 she wrote to a young teacher. “I used to prepare my lessons on
my knees (don’t say this to others). You would find it a help, I think,
to do this sometimes.”
Her literature lessons were rather unusual. She dealt with the great
writers in a great way, and used these lessons for conveying moral
teaching that could not very well be given in Scripture lessons.
Browning she loved, and her senior girls never left school without
having been introduced by Dorothea Beale to some of his great, shorter
poems. Her book on Literary Studies gives one an idea of how she
dealt with literature in her classes. There is in this book a very
interesting dialogue, between a person of the seventeenth and one of
the nineteenth century on the theology of “Paradise Lost”. After an
interesting discussion on the different conceptions of God and His ways
the seventeenth century representative says:--
“You do not do justice to us. You do not think Bunyan meant us to
believe Christian took a real journey away from a particular town. Why
do you suppose Milton meant that Satan was thrown out of a special
place in this, which we call space? You do not think that the Red Cross
Knight was believed by Spenser, or Christian by Bunyan, to have been
immersed in a dark dungeon.”
On the subject of marriage Dorothea Beale had very high ideals. She
urged girls to become independent by their own efforts, so that they
should never be tempted to a mercenary marriage. She was very scornful
of the type of modern novel that represents men and women as slaves of
their passions, unrestrained by the bonds of marriage or the claims of
morality. Before she finally accepted her vocation Dorothea Beale was
herself for a short time engaged to be married: but the engagement came
to an end, and the work of a great school, instead of a quiet home,
became her part in life.
Her literary activities were considerable. She wrote on a good many
subjects, but chiefly on those connected with her work. Some of her
essays were published in the College Magazine, others in periodicals.
All her work gives one much food for thought.
The Bishop of Stepney, at the memorial service held for Dorothea Beale
in St. Paul’s Cathedral, gave a very true epitome of the things that
Dorothea Beale stood for.
“She gave a proof that the personality of a teacher was the most
indispensable and enduring power in education. The main object of all
her work at Cheltenham and elsewhere was not so much to instruct the
mind as to inspire the character. She held before herself a clear ideal
of what a cultivated woman ought to be, strong and self-controlled,
filling her life with the highest interests, developing herself to the
utmost for the glory of God and the service of man.”