Dorothea Beale, who was born on March 21, 1831, was fortunate in her parentage and early environment. Her father, Miles Beale, was a surgeon who had been trained at Guy’s Hospital. He came of a family of literary traditions, and he himself was a man of wide interests and learning. Her mother, Dorothea Margaret Complin, was of Huguenot extraction and belonged to a family distinguished for its ability, counting among its members several “advanced” women. Mrs. Beale’s aunt, Mrs. Cornwallis, the wife of a rector of Wittersham, Kent, was a woman of considerable intellect and great spiritual gifts. She wrote several books of a devotional character. One of these, “Preparation for the Lord’s Supper with a Companion to the Altar,” contains much excellent advice to ladies on the use and abuse of speech, the regulation of time, indolence, desire of admiration, sickness, etc., breathing a devout and earnest spirit, and revealing in the writer an attitude of great severity towards herself. This little book, with its old-fashioned appearance, seemed to me, as I read it, full of the spirit which animated Mrs. Cornwallis’s celebrated great-niece.

Her daughter, Caroline Frances Cornwallis, was a remarkable woman. Her published letters are extremely interesting, and deal with a variety of subjects, Italy, Education, Religion, Science, Philosophy. She wrote a number of books in the series called “Small Books on Great Subjects”. These were published anonymously, and were considered to be the work of a man, at a time when the known authorship of a woman would have damned any book. Miss Cornwallis often used to laugh up her sleeve at the appreciation of critics who would undoubtedly have criticised her work unfavourably had they known it was that of a woman. She had a frail body, a courageous mind, and a devout spirit. At times she adopted a cynical attitude towards men’s low estimate of the intellectual powers of her sex. “Every man, you know, thinks he has a prescriptive right to be better informed than a woman, unless he has science enough to see that the said woman is up with him and therefore must know something.” This was, however, just a strain of bitterness bred in a brilliant, active mind handicapped by lack of facilities for real education, and restricted on every side by the bounds of custom and prejudice.

These two women undoubtedly influenced the future head of Cheltenham. Mrs. Beale’s sister, Elizabeth Complin, had lived for some time with the Cornwallises and was the medium through whom the young Beales came into contact with their ideas and ideals.

Dorothea Beale was also fortunate in being one of a large family. The spirit of the home seems to have been one of love and service. There was also a strong intellectual atmosphere, in which the children learnt early to love the best in literature. Her father would often read aloud to his children extracts from Shakespeare and other great writers, and from him and her mother Dorothea began early to imbibe a love of learning, and to find in literature some revelation of the great spiritual realities.

Dorothea’s education and that of the older members of the family was at first under the guidance of a governess. It must have been quite early in life that she received her first inkling of the incompetence of teachers of that day. She remembered a rapid succession of teachers whom Mrs. Beale was compelled to dismiss on account of their inability to teach. There appears to have been only one satisfactory governess, a Miss Wright, who was excellent: after she left, the girls were sent to school.

“It was a school,” says Dorothea Beale in her autobiography, “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 doggerel verses on the solar system.”

At the age of thirteen Dorothea was obliged to leave school on account of ill-health. She always considered this a fortunate circumstance as it enabled her to carry on her own education. No doubt a good deal of time was lost in following the circuitous routes of all self-educators, but the grit, determination, and power to overcome difficulties thereby developed, probably more than compensated for this. Libraries, notably those of the London Institute and Crosby Hall, at this time supplied her with many good books. The Medical Book Club circulated some books of general interest. She and her sisters were also able to attend excellent lectures given at the Literary Institution, Crosby Hall, and at the Gresham Institute.

“Miss Beale never learned to play,” said Mrs. Raikes in a speech on Foundress’ Day at the College after the beloved Principal had passed away. “During her girlhood there was no hockey, tennis, net-ball, swimming or other healthy exercise for girls; and Dorothea and her sisters were thrown back for their pleasure on the joys of the mind. Not only did Dorothea Beale never play herself, but she could never quite see the need for other people to play. The playgrounds, etc., which perforce grew up round Cheltenham Ladies’ College, were always rather a stumbling-block to her, though she was wise enough to be led by those who were more in touch in this respect with the spirit of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

“Her reading always inclined to the solid type, and in her girlhood she came across few novels.

“Her love of reading was never allowed to dissipate itself on trivialities, and here she had a great advantage over girls of to-day, for the ephemeral literature of this age—the endless magazines and short stories—did not exist to tempt and gradually to fritter away a good literary taste.”

She was at this time very much interested in the life of Pascal who, prevented by his father from acquiring a knowledge of mathematics, discovered for himself the truths of Euclid. Perhaps, as Mrs. Raikes suggests, it was Pascal’s example which inspired her to work through the first six books of Euclid by herself. She plodded steadily through the fifth book, not knowing that even at that time a few simple algebraic principles were substituted for Euclid’s rather laborious methods. To Dorothea Beale, as to many boys and girls, mathematics came as a wonderful revelation; they opened up to her developing mind a new world. In her subsequent work as a teacher she seems to have been able to hand on to her pupils something of the thrill and wonder that she herself experienced in these early days.

In the year 1847 Dorothea was sent with two elder sisters to a Mrs. Bray’s school for English girls in the Champs Elysées. This school is perhaps best described in Miss Beale’s own words in the “History of Cheltenham Ladies’ College”.

“I was myself for a few months, in 1848, pupil in a school that was considered grand and expensive. Mrs. Trimmer’s was the English History used in the highest classes. We were taught to perform conjuring tricks with the globe by which we obtained answers to problems without one principle being made intelligible. We were even compelled to learn from Lindley Murray lists of prepositions that we might be saved the trouble of thinking.”

She was glad, however, in later life of this and similar experiences. It gave her some idea of the enemies of education she had to fight. It made her realise how great was the need for the thorough training and education of teachers and how little could be accomplished without it.

In 1848 Mrs. Bray’s school came to an untimely end through the Revolution of that year and Dorothea returned home at the age of seventeen. Those who knew her at that time described her as “a grave and quiet girl, with a sweet serious expression and deliberate speech: also with a sunshiny smile and merry laugh on occasion. She was remarkable, even in a studious, sedentary family, for her love of reading and study.” According to one authority she was quite beautiful as a girl. One evening she and her sister Eliza went to a dance, Dorothea looking very lovely in a beautiful white dress. Eliza was dancing with a young man, who asked the name of that beautiful girl. “Oh!” said Eliza, delighted that he should admire Dorothea, “she’s my sister. Do you think she’s like me?”—“Good gracious, no!” blurted out the tactless young man. Eliza Beale used to tell this story with great zest, fully enjoying the reflection on her own looks.

In one part of her autobiography Dorothea Beale speaks of the influences of her early life.

“An aunt, my godmother, lived with us, and was often my friend in my childish troubles.... The strongest influence [on my inner life] 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.”

Already she had begun to show some of the characteristics which were so marked in later life, her devotion to duty, her keen intellectual interests. She was prepared for Confirmation, in 1847, by the Rev. Charles Mackenzie, to whose teaching Dorothea felt she owed much. Of early religious influences and experiences she thus speaks in her MS. autobiography.

“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.”

Religion with her was never allowed to be simply an affair of the emotions: it meant obedience, discipline, the rigid performance of duty, but it was also a source of the deepest emotions.

“I remember how, as the story of the Crucifixion was read, the church would grow dark, as it seemed.... 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.... 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’.”

In later years she said that she could not remember a time when God was not an ever-present Friend, a knowledge which sustained her through the darkest periods of her life, and her many struggles.

Whether she had at this time realised what her life-work was to be, I cannot say, but it was at home that she began to enjoy her first experience of teaching. Her brothers at the Merchant Taylors’ School suffered much from the unintelligent teaching prevalent in the boys’ schools of that day, and received help in their Latin and Mathematics from their clever elder sister. All this work doubtless helped to develop in Dorothea that clear vigorous mentality that characterised the great Head Mistress of Cheltenham, and impressed still more definitely on her mind the need for reforms in education.

Duty seems to have been, even at this early age, the key-note of her life, and she apparently bore an older girl’s usual share in domestic affairs, helping with the mending and the usual work of the house.

But this time at home was just a quiet breathing space before wider opportunities of study were granted to her.