CHAPTER III.
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.