‘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.’
wisdom of solomon, vi. 16, 17, 18.
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 (dorothea’s grandfather) 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[2] 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[3] 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.’[1]
james trimmer died when only twelve. his other grandmother was also literary—mrs. sarah trimmer, famous in her own day as the author of nearly thirty volumes for the young. her sacred history was the most important of these, but perhaps the best known now is the history of the robins.
‘one story of his childhood,’ runs the autobiography, ‘was a great favourite with us as children. his uncle had settled to sell a pony of which james was very fond, and many were the tears he shed. his grandmother (mrs. cornwallis) said, “i think, james, that this life is a journey upwards; each time we do right, or bear a sorrow patiently, we get up one step of the ladder to heaven.” so he dried his eyes and was quite cheerful once more. meanwhile, his uncle, seeing the boy’s sorrow, cancelled the sale, and brought news to james that the pony was his once more. again to his surprise, james burst into tears, and at length it was drawn from him that he feared now he would have to come down from that step of the ladder. he was finally consoled by some such doctrine as browning has commended in the words, “’tis not what man does that exalts him, but what man would do.” all her pupils were not as responsive as james. once, after expending her eloquence on a plough-boy whom she was preparing for confirmation, she said: “now, are you not glad that you have a soul?” to which she could only get the reply, “i don’t care very little about it....”
‘mr. cornwallis was a scholar; he was a descendant of archbishop cornwallis. i do not know any details of his college[4] 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.’[2]
in after years miss caroline cornwallis moved to maidstone, where she exercised her many talents and versatile mind in varied occupations. miss cornwallis not only studied greek, latin, and hebrew, but such questions of the day as criminal procedure; she also read philosophy. she wrote besides articles for the westminster review and fraser’s magazine, several books in a series entitled ‘small books on great subjects—edited by a few well-wishers to knowledge.’ the first was philosophical theories and experience of a pariah. she said women were regarded as pariahs, and were it known that the book was written by a woman it would not be read.[3] others of the series which she wrote were some volumes entitled a brief view of greek philosophy, and some historical works, the state of the world before the introduction of christianity. she also wrote a classical novel called pericles and aspasia. miss cornwallis rejoiced in the fact that as a woman, though unknown, she obtained for her writings the praise of ‘big-wigs.’
[5]
‘“i long,” she wrote to a friend after one of her works had received flattering notices in the british medical journal, “to knock all the big-wigs together and say it was a woman that did all this—a woman that laughed at you all and despised your praise. and if, like caligula’s wish, i could put all mankind into one and leave you to say that in its ears when i am gone quietly to my grave, i think it would be glorious. it is as a woman, and not as the individual c.f.c., that i enjoy my triumph; for, as regards my own proper self, i like to creep in a corner and be quiet; but to raise my whole sex and with it the world is an object worth fagging for. heart and hand to the work.”’
caroline frances cornwallis
from a painting by herself
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.[4]
the authorship of the small books was a well-kept secret.
‘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.’[5]
the beales were a very large family, with more than twenty years between the eldest and youngest children;[6] 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.[6]
‘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 arch?ologist, william symonds,[7] 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[7] 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.’[8]
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[8] 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.”
‘the books that we read most on sunday—for no secular book was allowed—were mant’s bible with pictures, which were explained by my mother, and a book of martyrs with dreadful pictures; bunyan’s pilgrim’s progress, with the outline drawings, and a number of tracts, such as parley the porter, and stories of good and bad children.
‘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[9] 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.’[9]
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 (a proceeding which as a spelling reformer i must now condemn), 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.’[10]
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[10] lamentations of king hezekiah, the pretty but somewhat weak “mother’s picture” of cowper, and worse doggrel verses on the solar system.’[11]
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.
‘i know one school,’ she wrote, ‘existing to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, in which the terms were not less than ￡100 a year. the following was the arrangement of hours: rise at seven o’clock ... lessons till eight; breakfast, consisting of bread and butter, with extremely weak coffee; lessons till twelve, luncheon, consisting of bread and butter, or bread and jam, and “turns” till one o’clock. these “turns” consisted in going thirty times post haste round and round the garden; they could scarcely be accomplished unless the luncheon were carried round in the hand and eaten en route. lessons from one o’clock until three forty-five. dinner four o’clock, and “turns” in fine weather immediately following, as after luncheon. lessons until eight, then tea, and bed at nine.’[12]
the school was at stratford, and it lent perhaps a personal reminiscence to a favourite line of chaucer’s prologue, on which, in the literature lessons at cheltenham, miss beale never failed to dwell.
‘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.’[13]
[11]
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,—
‘ill-health compelled me to leave at thirteen, and then began a valuable time of education under the direction of myself, during which i expended a great deal of energy in useless directions, but gained more than i should have probably done at any existing school; dreaming much, and seeking for a fuller realisation of the great spiritual realities, which make one feel that all knowledge is sacred. we had access to two large libraries; one that of the london institution, the other that of crosby hall; besides which the medical book club circulated many books of general interest, which were read by all and talked over at meal-times and in the evening, when my father used often to read aloud to us. novels rarely came our way, but we found pasturage enough. we read a great deal of history: the works of froissart, thierry, thiers, alison, miller’s philosophy of history, sir james stephen’s books, prescott’s, creasy’s stand out very distinctly to memory.’[14]
the reading of a book named scientific dialogues she counted also as an era in her mental history. all the good reviews of the time, the edinburgh, quarterly, and blackwood’s magazine, came in her way, with books of travel and biographies. she made elaborate tables on all sorts of subjects, some of which in neat handwriting[12] may still be seen. she had access to all whately’s works, and worked up alone his logic and rhetoric.
this unwearied study was no accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, it was the outcome of a true if youthful admiration for what was noble and good. ‘i worshipped for years isabella of castile. sir james stephen’s essay on george the third filled my imagination with magnificent visions; his port royalists were my ideal characters; especially was pascal a hero, i read and re-read his life and provincial letters.’[15]
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.’[16] 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[13] 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.’[17]
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 elysées. this school, kept by english ladies, was supposed to offer a good english education, as well as french.
‘imagine our disgust,’ writes miss beale, ‘at being required to read english history in mrs. trimmer, to learn by heart all murray’s grammar, to learn even lists of prepositions by heart, in order that we might parse without the trouble of thinking. i learned them with such anger that the list was burnt into my brain, and i can say it now. the “use of the globes,” too, we were taught, and very impertinent was i thought for asking a reason for some of the tricks we were made to play with a globe under the direction of keith. we used indeed to read collectively robertson’s charles the fifth, i.e. it was read aloud on dancing evenings. each class went out in succession for the dancing lesson; thus no one read the whole book, though the school in its corporate capacity did. i felt oppressed with the routine life; i, who had been able to moon, grub, alone for hours, to live in a world of dreams and thoughts of my own, was now put into a cage and had to walk round and round like a squirrel. i felt thought was killed. still, i know now that the time was well spent. the mechanical order, the system of the french school was worth seeing, worth living in, only not for long.’[18]
[14]
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 old-fashioned word exactly describes the neat, fine, pointed handwriting, which is preserved for us in two or three french exercise-books of the time. this writing soon after began to suffer from too much of the german character, and later still more from unduly ambitious haste. there is also in existence a thin book of dictées signed dorothée, belonging to this period. the teacher has written at the foot of one or two of these, after the enumeration of a few omitted commas and accents, a word surely inapt as bestowed on this pupil, ‘etourdie.’
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[15] 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.
there was plenty to do at home; younger sisters to be taught and schoolboys’ lessons to be superintended. the boys were at merchant taylors’ school, where the education was neither better nor worse than in other public schools of the day. such as it was, it gave dorothea a horror of the old-fashioned methods by which boys were taught latin and euclid, without intelligence and without sympathy. it was one of her tasks at this time to aid in the daily grind of this uninteresting work. mrs. frederick sewell, an old friend of the family, remembers the boys going off to their lessons under the supervision of the clever elder sister. uncongenial as must have been to her the work of directing boys already wearied with a long day at school, it was evidently done in a spirit of dutifulness and high endeavour. in 1876, a brother, the reverend edward beale of the society of st. john the evangelist, cowley, wrote to her after what proved to be a final parting: ‘our lives seem wonderfully linked together, and i am more conscious every year how much my life has been influenced by your early teaching. if i had[16] followed that way of duty i should have found the entrance less rugged to the more excellent way.’ nor was the task a wasted one for dorothea herself. she determined, she tells us, to follow her brothers’ lessons on her own account as well as theirs, and thus was enabled to gain a thorough knowledge of latin grammar.
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.
for she was by no means unequal to feminine pursuits. she could be what is called useful at home; the inevitable sock-darning which falls to a girl’s portion in a family of many boys was not neglected; though carried on simultaneously with the mental exercise of learning german verbs. an exquisitely fine piece of tatting remains to testify to skilfulness of fingers, as well as to the perseverance she more gladly devoted to intellectual efforts. such was the interleaved new testament, a monument of patient toil, into which she copied in very small writing whole passages of comment from the fathers and other writers. so full of work was the home life that there can have been scarcely any leisure; but a few so-called holidays were spent in rubbing brasses in the ancient city churches. there was full occupation even for the strenuous spirit of dorothea beale, in the interests and affairs of home, but a wider field for her energies was to open with the gates of queen’s college in 1848.
