Read Ebook: Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham by Raikes Elizabeth

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1921 lines and 187465 words, and 39 pages

CHAP. PAGE

INDEX 427

CAMBRAY HOUSE. From an Old Engraving " 90

MISS DOROTHEA BEALE, 1859 " 108

MR. T. HOUGHTON BRANCKER " 120

THE LOWER HALL, LADIES' COLLEGE, CHELTENHAM. A Photograph by Miss Bertha Synge " 216

S. HILDA'S HALL, OXFORD " 238

LADIES' COLLEGE AND GARDEN, 1908 " 254

THE EMPRESS FREDERICK AT CHELTENHAM. From a Photograph by Mr. Domenico Barnett " 334

DOROTHEA BEALE, LL.D. " 340

CHILDHOOD

'Wisdom goeth about seeking them that are worthy of her, and in their paths she appeareth graciously, and in every purpose she meeteth them.

'For her true beginning is desire of discipline; and the care for discipline is love of her; and love of her is observance of laws.'

Dorothea Beale was born on March 21, 1831. The story of her childhood and youth forms a good illustration of the best education that girls of the early Victorian time could obtain. It gives also a glimpse of the fears and hopes, the silent struggles, the disappointments of many a girl who strove to wrest, as from a grudging Fate, the opportunity to inform and use her mind. As far as possible this story is told autobiographically.

Miss Beale belonged to a Gloucestershire family. One ancestor, in the early days of the manufacturing settlement in the Stroud Valley, married a Miss Hyde, a relation of the Chancellor. She brought to her husband Hyde Court, Chalford, where Miss Beale's brother, Mr. Henry Beale, now resides. Miss Beale's own father, however, never lived there. His parents, who married young, settled at Brownshill in Gloucestershire, and here his father died, leaving a widow aged only twenty-four with three children, John, Miles, and Mary, to be brought up on very slender means. Mrs. John Beale removed to Bath, where she remained till the boys left school for Guy's Hospital. Then she came to live with them in Essex, where for a time they practised in partnership. In 1824 Miles married Dorothea Margaret Complin, a lady of Huguenot extraction; her grandfather had practised as a physician in Spital Square, one of the original settlements of the French immigrants.

In 1830 the young couple with three children came to live in St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, where a year later Dorothea, their fourth child and third daughter, was born. She was baptized in the ancient church of St. Helen's on June 10, 1831. 'Awoke early. Baptism Day. Read the service,' she wrote in her diary in 1891.

The Complins were a family of wide connections. Mrs. Beale's aunt, Mrs. Cornwallis, wife of the Rev. William Cornwallis, rector of Wittersham, Kent, was an active, benevolent woman with literary tastes and occupations. She took a great interest in her two young nieces, Elizabeth and Dorothea Margaret Complin, who at an early age lost their own mother, her sister. The two little girls were sent to school at Ealing, where the elder, Elizabeth, gained many prizes or 'Rewards of Merit,' as school prizes were then called. After her sister's marriage to Mr. Miles Beale, Elizabeth Complin lived for some time with her clever aunt and cousin, Mrs. Cornwallis and her daughter Caroline, sharing their interests and studies. On the death of her brother's wife she came to live in London. There she was brought into immediate touch with her nieces, Dorothea Beale and her sisters, whom she delighted to help and advise in their reading, and who by her means became familiar with the aims and ideals of the Cornwallises. These more distant relations, whose intellectual aims and work Miss Beale always reckoned among the influences of her early life, were themselves authors of no mean merit. 'Mrs. Cornwallis wrote several devotional books, and is said to have learned Hebrew in the first instance to teach her grandson, James Trimmer. She wrote also for him a series of papers on the canonical Scriptures, in four volumes. This was published by subscription, as was the custom with expensive works in those days. The Queen and a number of great people entered their names, and with the profits Mrs. Cornwallis was able to build schools in her husband's parish.'

'Mr. Cornwallis was a scholar; he was a descendant of Archbishop Cornwallis. I do not know any details of his College career; but he taught his only unmarried daughter Latin and Greek classics, and she gained such a rare facility in understanding that he used to read the classics aloud to her, and expect her to follow. He was a friend of Sismondi, from whom Miss Cornwallis received an offer of marriage, which she declined on the ground of great disparity of age. Sismondi lent her afterwards his villa at Pisa, and my aunt, her great friend, accompanied her there. A journey to Italy for two ladies was a great undertaking, and many interesting reminiscences used we to hear from my aunt. She there acquired a good knowledge of Italian, by which we benefited later.'

Miss Cornwallis reflects the thought of her day with regard to women's work. It was one of the tasks of her cousin, Dorothea Beale--whose 'fagging' in the next generation did so much for her own sex and the world--to show that the best work is done when the question of what will be said about it does not affect it one way or the other.

'We did not know who wrote the books till after her death, though my aunt, who gave them to us, often stayed with her as her amanuensis. Miss Cornwallis was a skilled handworker, too. Before the Society for Home Arts existed she learned to bind books for her library. She was no mean artist, and her portrait of herself in her library is considered very successful. I have heard how she fitted up a marionette theatre for the amusement of friends. I did not know her personally; she died when I was young; but the talk of her ability and knowledge, and the association with my aunt, Elizabeth Complin, who was her friend, had much to do with calling out my literary ambition.'

The Beales were a very large family, with more than twenty years between the eldest and youngest children; and all those things which make home life at once precious in itself and valuable as a training for the world's work were theirs to a full extent: mutual love and toil and suffering, the elder serving the younger, the little ones looking up to the wise elder sisters, the constant practice of all those qualities which are the law of a well-ordered religious home. Both parents from the midst of their own absorbing personal occupations found time to lead out the mental abilities of their children, by reading aloud to them, giving verses of Scripture and poetry to be learned by heart, and finding time to hear them repeated. The home atmosphere was serious and intellectual. Dorothea said she owed much to the literary tastes of her parents. 'I shall never forget,' she said, 'how we learned to love Shakspere, through my father's reading to us, when we were quite young, selected portions. I still remember the terror which, as a very small child, I felt as I heard Portia pronounce the verdict. I thought Shylock had really gained the day.

'History and general literature we would read with our mother, and listen with delight to her stories of the eventful era she had lived through.'

Miles Beale, like his wife, belonged to a family with cultivated tastes and interests. Among his relations he could reckon the eminent geologist and archaeologist, William Symonds, rector of Pendock, Gloucestershire, whose daughter married Sir Joseph Hooker. In connection with his friend the Rev. Charles Mackenzie, vicar of St. Helen's, and others, Mr. Beale joined a committee known as the Literary Society, of which he became honorary secretary, for the institution of lectures in Crosby Hall. A library and evening classes were also formed, and these became in time the basis of the present City of London College for young men. He was much helped by Miss Maria Hackett, well known for her diligent efforts to rescue old endowments which, granted for girls' education, had been alienated to boys. Mr. Beale, who was fond of music, was also a prime mover in getting up concerts of sacred music. 'This made us acquainted with some musicians, and amongst others with Mrs. Bartholomew and her husband, the friend of Mendelssohn, who translated many of the German songs. He was a most interesting and cultivated man, an artist and dramatist.'

The growing children were often allowed to be present when their father's friends came, and thus silently heard much thoughtful and intellectual conversation. They looked up to him as to one who expected them to care for books and for matters of public moment, and he strove to interest them in his own pursuits and reading, and to give them a taste for what was really good. '"Blessed are the pure in heart"--poor Swift,' he said one day as he handled a volume of the great satirist. 'That,' said Dorothea long after, 'was the best literature lesson I ever received.' The daughter must have resembled her father both in literary taste and zeal. This busy man, who found time to pursue so many interests, would accuse himself of being 'naturally idle.' It may come as a surprise to many who knew the strenuous life at Cheltenham to find this was a fault of which the Principal constantly accused herself.

One friend who was much with the Beales, often dining with them on Sundays, was Charles Mackenzie, then headmaster of St. Olave's Grammar School, and successively vicar of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and St. Benet's, Gracechurch Street, and prebendary of St. Paul's. Dorothea felt she owed much to his teaching; he prepared her for confirmation in 1847. As children she and her brothers and sisters attended St. Helen's. Again to quote her autobiography:

'To come to the nearer influences of my childhood. There was the faith of my parents, the morning and evening prayer. There was the Bible picture-book and the Sunday lessons. The church we went to was an old one, St. Helen's, and at the entrance were the words, "This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven." There were high pews, and the service was almost a duet between clergyman and clerk, yet I realised, even more than I ever have in the most beautiful cathedral and perfect services, that the Lord was in that place, even as Jacob realised in the desert what he had failed to find at home. There was over the East window an oval coat of arms with strange scrolls which seemed to have eyes, and reclining on each side two life-sized golden angels. This thing seemed to speak strangely to my spiritual consciousness. Our clergyman must have read well. I remember how, as the story of the Crucifixion was read, the church would grow dark, as it seemed. There were no hymn-books, only a few hymns pasted on a card, and generally we sang from Tate and Brady. I know nothing of the substance of the sermons now, but I remember the emotion they often called forth, and how I with difficulty restrained my tears. There was a Tuesday evening service, at which I suppose there were never a dozen present, but I found there great help, and to be obliged to go elsewhere on that night was a great privation. The hymns were a great power in my life. I remember the joy with which I would sing, in my own room, Ken's Evening Hymn, and the awful joy of the Trinity hymn, "Holy, holy, holy."

'An aunt, my godmother, lived with us, and was often my friend in my childish troubles. I shall not speak much of the governesses we had in succession, because they left but little impression on my inner life, nor need I speak of all my brothers and sisters, except so far as they come into my inner life. The strongest influence was that of my sister Eliza. We were constantly together. She had a very lively imagination, and on most nights would tell me stories that she had invented. Early in the mornings she would transform our bedroom into some wild magic scene, and we would play at Alexander the Great, and ride Pegasus on the foot of our four-post bedstead. I remember now how Mangnall furnished her with mental pictures of heathen gods, which were cut out in paper and painted. London children had no outdoor games.'

The elder daughters were at first educated by daily governesses. Dorothea said that among her earliest reminiscences about 1840 were those relating to the choice of a governess.

'My mother advertised and hundreds of answers were sent. She began by eliminating all those in which bad spelling occurred , next the wording and composition were criticised, and lastly a few of the writers were interviewed and a selection was made. But alas! an inspection of our exercise-books revealed so many uncorrected faults, that a dismissal followed, and another search resulted in the same way. I can remember only one really clever and competent teacher; she had been educated in a good French school and grounded us well in the language.'

Memory preserves the name--Miss Wright--of the lady who earned this word of praise. When she left, the girls were sent to school.

'It was a school,' again to quote Miss Beale's own account of her education, 'considered much above the average for sound instruction; our mistresses were women who had read and thought; they had taken pains to arrange various schemes of knowledge; yet what miserable teaching we had in many subjects; history was learned by committing to memory little manuals; rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the Lamentations of King Hezekiah, the pretty but somewhat weak "Mother's Picture" of Cowper, and worse doggrel verses on the solar system.'

The arrangements were doubtless similar to those of the period in all schools of the same kind, such as were described by Miss Beale in one of her early articles on the Education of Girls.

'After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.'

She always had a horror of schoolgirl French, and the practice at one time so common of permitting no talk except in French.

'Our thinking power was hindered from developing by intercourse with one another, because we were required to speak in a tongue in which we could indeed talk, but in which conversation was impossible; and the language we spoke was one peculiar to English boarding schools.'

Young as Dorothea was when she went to school, she was no doubt distinguished there for her industry and ability, and certainly for her conscientiousness. A little story of this remains. On one occasion she fainted in church, and when some kindly hand removed her bonnet, she revived, and clung to it desperately, because she would not have her head uncovered in church. The weary rounds in the garden lingered in the memory of those who performed them, and there were those who would tell in after years how faithfully the little Dorothea would perform her 'turns,' while some girls were not above cheating a little.

The school-days were not prolonged, for 'fortunately,' she says,--

Pascal's life perhaps breathed for her a spirit of emulation. 'I borrowed a Euclid, and without any help read the first six books, carefully working through the whole of the fifth, as I did not know what was usually done. It did not occur to me to ask my father for lessons in such subjects.' She also made some way with algebra, and calculated for herself the distance to the moon. Much time, she owned, was wasted by working alone. But the very difficulties proved a source of help, showing her the value of knowledge acquired by effort and search, as opposed to mere information received from another. In all her reading she received both help and sympathy from her aunt, Elizabeth Complin, who herself understood Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, had considerable taste for mathematics, and was fond of philosophy. She was one of the first subscribers to Mudie's. The London Library was also a mine of wealth to the young readers.

Outside her home, the chief educational influence for Dorothea at this period must have been the lectures of the Literary Institution at Crosby Hall, and more especially the Gresham Lectures. She attended some of these in company with a younger sister, who often grew weary and hungry when Dorothea, after a long morning's work, would stay to talk abstrusely with a professor, or linger over a bookstall on the way home to dinner. The professor was probably Mr. Pullen, of whose lectures on astronomy she wrote that they 'inspired a passionate desire to know more of mathematics, and to understand all the processes described. I obtained books on mechanics and spelt them out as well as I was able, but was often baffled. The mysteries of the Calculus I pored over in vain ... not knowing that I lacked the knowledge which alone could make it intelligible.'

Dorothea's educational fortune proved itself to be better than that of the Prioress, for in 1847 she was sent with two elder sisters, their characters 'ripe for observation,' to Mrs. Bray's fashionable school for English girls in the Champs Elys?es. This school, kept by English ladies, was supposed to offer a good English education, as well as French.

One personal glimpse we have of the sisters at school in a letter of Mr. Beale's to Dorothea: 'I thought your last letter very nicely written; tell Eliza so, though it did not apply to hers. She does not write much, though in the right spirit too: but a genteel hand is of great importance. I am aware it requires much practice.'

The school was brought to an untimely end by the Revolution of 1848, when a mob surrounded the house demanding garden-tools as firearms. These were not available, but Miss Bray faced the men and persuaded them to leave quietly. Before this incident occurred Dorothea Beale and her sisters had been fetched home by a brother, who did not, however, leave Paris without taking them round the city to see as much as they could of the movements of the Revolution.

This return from school may be considered the close of childhood; for Dorothea was now seventeen. A grave and quiet girl, so we learn from one or two friends of her youth, with a sweet, earnest expression, and deliberate speech; also with a sunshiny smile and a merry laugh on occasion. She was remarkable even in a studious, sedentary family for her love of reading and study. For her the fields of literature had taken the place of those other fields and gardens now held to be a necessity for the best development of children's bodies and minds. But her life in the less favourable surroundings of a great city was made bright by 'the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream.' The joys of imagination and fancy, the delight of entering into the thoughts of the great, were hers, and lifted her above what was small and trivial. She knew also, and from babyhood seems to have known, a stern side of life. An innate sense of duty, that guide she never failed to observe, already hedged her steps, protecting her strong, eager spirit from flights of 'unchartered freedom,' leading it through restraint and self-denial towards a glorious liberty.

The younger sisters remember the careful and regular teaching given them by the elder ones, the quiet instructive games they were encouraged to play with little pictures from Greek mythology, and the rewards bestowed on industrious pupils. It is on record that Dorothea herself dressed a doll for a little sister's birthday.

QUEEN'S COLLEGE

'Long shall the College live and grow, When we three sleep in peace, And scholars better far than we Its glory shall increase.'

Mr. Llewelyn Davis rightly said that the establishment of Queen's College was an epoch in women's education. Like that of all really great institutions, its development and growth were an outcome of the needs of the time. But the movement which led up to it was 'not from beneath but from above. It was compassion in the hearts of a few good men which moved them to help a forlorn class of solitary and ill-paid workers, that seemed the immediate cause. A little band of men full of faith and good works came to the help of a man whose influence was quiet but strong.' The good man of whom Miss Beale thus spoke was David Laing, who was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Kentish Town, from 1847 to 1858. Good he was, in many senses of the word: a man of education, wide culture, and personal force. He showed both large-hearted charity and wisdom in dealing with the needs of those for whom it was his duty to care, and he was ready to make any self-sacrifice required in carrying out his schemes for them.

In 1843 he became Honorary Secretary of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, a position he occupied till his death in 1860, and the lamentable state of women's education, particularly that of professing teachers, was brought forcibly before him. The society, which had had a kind of passive existence only for two or three years, began at once under Mr. Laing to develop manifold activities. Within a year the work of help for which it was primarily intended was in full swing, and its scope of usefulness was enlarged by the establishment of a registry and a scheme for granting diplomas to governesses.

It was soon found to be a real difficulty to know the efficient teacher from the mere pretender. For the lack of education is frequently seen in an assumption of knowledge. In the days when women were required to teach everything, a confession of ignorance on almost any subject was regarded as a disgrace. The advance of true education is marked by the fact that it is no longer necessary for a governess to pretend to knowledge she does not possess.

It was soon seen that if the registry for teachers was to be of any value, some test must be established for the women it undertook to recommend. The first efforts at examination revealed such depths of ignorance, that the further necessity of instructing those who wished to avail themselves of the society's diplomas was perceived. This need happily coalesced with the generous plan of Miss Murray, Maid of Honour to the Queen. She seems first to have thought of a college for women, and had already received donations of money towards such an object. These she transferred to Mr. Laing, when in 1844 he entered into communication with the Government respecting the establishment of a college. In 1847 Queen Victoria graciously gave her permission for the adoption of the title 'Queen's College,' and a house in Harley Street, adjacent to that occupied by the Governesses' Benevolent Institution was taken. Mr. Laing then called upon some of the Professors of King's College to help him in the work by giving lectures to governesses and others, and it was largely owing to their talent and unwearied kindness that the College became rapidly so successful.

It should not, however, be thought that Queen's College was destined by its founders solely to help governesses, though in this direction its usefulness was immediately seen. Miss Murray and Mr. Laing, like Alfred Tennyson and others less immediately interested in the scheme, looked beyond such direct results to the larger needs of women. The time had come when it was recognised that marriage could not be the lot of all,--that there might be purpose and interest in a woman's life even when she could not be married, and that to use marriage merely as an escape from an empty impoverished existence was an act unworthy of a good woman. Women were now willing to fit themselves for life independently of marriage, and for this end were seeking intellectual development. Therefore the founders of Queen's College planned that the education should be general, and not merely an initiation into a craft which a governess might learn as if she were a member of a certain guild. For the governess herself, it was surely best that she should be educated as if she had interests in common with the rest of her sex, and for all women it was needful that they should seek means to inform, occupy, and control their own active minds and 'wandering affections.' Mr. Laing thought with compassionate horror of the wasted lives of many women, of their capabilities and sympathies which were meant to enrich the lives of others, degraded by misuse or disuse into positively harmful activities. After Queen's College had been opened for some months he wrote, in words which some will recognise as a favourite quotation of Miss Beale's, 'the fate of some victim of a conventional marriage, or of a life of celibacy ending in deranged health, is particularly sad and pitiful. Like the daughters of Pandarus who, after being nurtured by the goddesses and fed on honey and incense by the Graces, are snatched away by the Harpies, "And doomed for all their loving eyes, To serve the Furies who hate constantly."'

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet