‘I learnt the royal genealogies Of Oviedo, the internal laws
Of the Burmese Empire,—by how many feet
Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe,
What navigable river joins itself
To Lara, and what census of the year five
Was taken at Klagenfurt....
I learnt much music, ...
fine sleights of hand
And unimagined fingering.’
E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh.
This volume, which memorialises one great name in one field of women’s work, is not the place in which to dwell upon the details of that work in other departments. But it may be remarked in passing that the educational movement itself was but a part—an essential part—of a larger one. It seemed, Miss Beale often said in speaking of this time, that women, like the damsel of old, heard the Voice of the Master penetrating the slumber of death, bidding them Arise. And they obeyed. They arose in many and various ways to minister to Him.
The first sign of this awakening was publicly seen in 1844, when Dr. Pusey engaged several leading laymen, among whom was Mr. Gladstone, to help him in the foundation of an Anglican Sisterhood. Two or three Orders date from before the opening of Queen’s College in 1848; those at Clewer and Wantage followed soon[135] after. The devotion of Florence Nightingale and her little band in 1854 led many to follow her example, and the reform of nursing steadily if slowly followed. In 1866, before the reports of the Schools’ Inquiry were published, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell took an M.D. degree in Switzerland, and Miss Garrett began to study for one in London. The desire for better teaching and training was widespread. The establishment of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College was a part of a larger movement which was affecting the whole country. Sixteen years had passed since the opening of Queen’s College had unsealed the fountain of knowledge for women. Immediately after, in 1849, a college had been established on undenominational lines. This was Bedford College, which found a liberal donor in Mr. Reid, and among its first teachers counted Francis Newman, De Morgan, and Dr. Carpenter. These led the way. Then in 1850 the great school which will for ever be associated with the name of Frances Mary Buss was opened in Camden Road, its enterprising head-mistress having there removed the private school she had carried on successfully for some years, to develop it on the lines of a public school, under the enlightened supervision of Mr. Laing. Cheltenham followed four years later, and these two, for many years the only public schools for girls in the country, may be considered the direct offspring of Queen’s College.
The general condition of girls’ education remained unimproved some years longer. Yet amid the thousands of private schools where worthless or poor teaching prevailed, there were a few which had come into the hands of capable women who had been inspired by the noble ideals of those who led the religious and intellectual thought of the day. The name of Elizabeth Sewell is representative of these; but for the most part they[136] lived and died unknown, because their work was of less public moment than that of the great leaders. Yet, in an account of women’s education it seems ungracious to name only the well known, however great, and to pass unnoticed the wise virgins, less prominent but not less faithful, whose lamps shone and were replenished through the night. In her death, as in her work on earth, Dorothea Beale was not alone. Miss Sewell, aged ninety, passed but a few weeks before her, and very shortly after two other unknown fellow-workers, who had not laboured in vain. The Times of January 1907 told of Miss Piper, the founder and head of Laleham. Of Miss Piper it could be said, that at a time when the instruction given to girls was of a formal character, ‘she set herself to make her pupils think, to stimulate interest, to enforce thoroughness.’ These were the very points on which the Schools’ Commission found girls’ education defective. A fortnight later died Emily Milner, who was for fifty years head of St. Mary’s School at Brighton, to which she devoted all her small income. She taught with marvellous energy and freshness, inspiring her pupils themselves to be zealous and persevering, and keeping them in touch with all that was best in the rapid advance and change of modern education. But such head-mistresses were rare. The Commissioners seldom found either thoroughness or freshness in the schools they inspected.
The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted in 1864, a year in which John Ruskin, in a lecture at Manchester, made a passionate appeal to rich women to claim their right to serve—and reign. His cry did not reach a larger public until, eight years later, the lecture was published under the title ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ in Sesame and Lilies. Like the simultaneous discovery[137] of some great star, by watchers strange to one another and half a continent apart, the movement for enlarging the scope of women’s work was furthered by men of divers ways and methods, heralded by visionaries like Tennyson and Ruskin, marshalled into deliberate order by high-hearted officials like the Secretary of the Governesses’ Benevolent Society and the School Inspector Joshua Fitch. Possibly no Assistant Commissioner, as he drew up his report, recalled the ringing words of Ruskin. But though the medium varies to the stretch of difference between the inspiration of a great poem and the deliberate statements of a blue-book, we recognise the same force behind both, and see both alike to be channels for one great stream of tendency. The conclusions drawn from the report, the resulting effects seen in new schools and organised public examinations, miss nothing of their special value if regarded in connection with such words as these:—
‘Let a girl’s education be as serious as a boy’s. You bring up your girls as if they were meant for side-board ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers ... teach them, also, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being.... There is hardly a girl’s school in this Christian Kingdom where the children’s courage and sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a door.... And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but noble teachers.’[40]
The Schools’ Inquiry Commission was instituted to examine into the existing state of education above the elementary grade, and to report on measures needed for its improvement, having special regard to all endowments applicable, or which could rightly be made applicable, thereto. By the instance of Miss Emily Davies,[138] girls’ schools were included in the inquiry. Among the Commissioners was Lord Lyttelton, who was regarded by those who wished to improve women’s education as a friend to girls. He had manfully asserted their right to a share of the endowments, and of women to a share in the management of girls’ schools. Sir Stafford Northcote, Dr. Temple, and Mr. Forster were also members of the Commission. Among the Assistant Commissioners, whose business it was to visit and report upon schools, were such well-known names as those of T. H. Green, J. G. Fitch, and J. Bryce.
No schools outside the eight selected districts were visited, but the Principals of some beyond their limit were requested to give evidence before the Commissioners in London. In the year 1868-9 reports and evidence were gradually issued in a series of twenty large blue-books. Of these volumes about nineteen-twentieths related to the education of boys and general questions, and about one-twentieth to the education of girls alone.
Miss Beale hailed the Commission as a means of bringing the thousand inefficiencies of girls’ education to the light. She took advantage of it in an address she gave in 1865 at Bristol, at a meeting of that now extinct body, the Social Science Congress, when she pleaded that, for boys and girls alike, education should be planned with the view of developing character. Her argument was none the less weighty because so carefully guarded:—
‘Let me say at once that I desire to institute no comparison between the mental abilities of boys and girls, but simply to say what seems to be the right means of training girls, so that they may best perform that subordinate part in the world to which, I believe, they have been called.
‘First, then, I think that the education of girls has too often[139] been made showy, rather than real and useful; that accomplishments have been made the main thing, because these would, it was thought, enable a girl to shine and attract, while those branches of study especially calculated to form the judgment, to cultivate the understanding, and to discipline the character (which would fit her to perform the duties of life) have been neglected; and thus, while temporary pleasure and profit have been sought, the great moral ends of education have been too often lost sight of.
‘To the poorer classes the toil and struggle of their daily life do, to some extent, afford an education which gives earnestness, and strength, and reality; and if we would not have the daughters of the higher classes idle and frivolous, they too must be taught to appreciate the value of work. We must endeavour to give them, while young, such habits, studies, and occupations as will brace the mind, improve the taste, and develop the moral character. They must learn, not for the sake of display, but from motives of duty. They must not choose the easy and agreeable, and neglect what is dull and uninviting. They must not expect to speak languages without mastering the rudiments; nor require to be finished in a year or two, but impatiently refuse to labour at a foundation.’
These words were pioneers of the Commissioners’ reports, in which they find a literal echo. The reports, with her own evidence and that of other ladies interested in education, were by Miss Beale preserved for posterity. She perceived instinctively that if they were not brought into general circulation all would soon be forgotten, much never known at all. With that stern sense of economy which caused her never to waste an opportunity or a scrap of material, she took the task upon herself. She obtained permission to republish the matter relating to girls’ schools in a single volume, for which she wrote a preface. In this she dealt with the evidence of the Commissioners, discussing at some length the questions of examinations and overwork. But she sought chiefly, as she had already done a few years before in an article in Fraser’s Magazine,[41] to show the[140] need of real study for women, the advantage to be gained for character and mind from such subjects as history and literature.
The general report of the Commissioners on Girls’ Education forms the first chapter of Miss Beale’s blue-book. It opened with a quotation to the effect that an educated mother is of even more importance than an educated father. Miss Beale may have thought this an exaggerated statement; but she must have welcomed and republished it with some satisfaction. She was for ever having it dinned into her ears, by those who opposed all serious study for their daughters, that girls should be educated to be wives and mothers. Mrs. Grey showed the real fallacy of the statement, in a paper which was the direct result of the republished reports, when she pointed out that girls were not being educated to be wives, but to get husbands. A happy marriage Mrs. Grey held to be ‘the summum bonum of a woman’s life ... not an object to be striven for, but to be received as the supreme grace of fate when the right time and the right person come.’[42] With Miss Beale and Miss Emily Davies she deprecated the education which is designed from the first to fit and prepare for a special position in life. She would have women and men alike, working men, tradesmen, men of fortune educated as human beings, not technically instructed for some special walk in life. In eloquent words she pictured the ideal for which she and others like-minded were striving, and were seeking to attain by the practical method of enlightening public opinion, founding schools, asking for public examinations. She wrote:—
[141]
‘The true meaning of the word education is not instruction.... It is intellectual, moral, and physical development, the development of a sound mind in a sound body, the training of reason to form just judgments, the disciplining of the will and affections to obey the supreme law of duty, the kindling and strengthening of the love of knowledge, of beauty, of goodness, till they become governing motives of action.’
Mrs. Grey’s conclusions were the same as those of the Commissioners, who complained that there was no demand for the education of girls, the cause of the indifference being that low idea which regards only the money value of education, and estimates it solely as a means of getting on. Girls were taught with a view to increasing their attractiveness before marriage, rather than with that of increasing their happiness and usefulness after. This was the general cause of dissatisfaction, but there were many details.
One and all complained that, with the exception of quite a few schools, the education of girls in the middle classes was much worse than that existing in the elementary schools of the day. This was of course specially the case in subjects like arithmetic, and arose greatly from the mistaken notion that they were of no use to girls. The Commissioners were unanimous in condemning the prevailing method of instruction by means of such books as Mangnall’s Questions and the like, termed by Mr. Bryce ‘the noxious brood of catechisms.’ Of this, be it said, Miss Mangnall’s famous work, which bears witness to its author’s well-stored mind, and which reached nearly a hundred editions, was the best. The ‘Questions’ demanded indeed the knowledge of such useless facts as the number of houses burned in the Great Fire of London; but there were in use, in the numerous small private schools of the period, cheaper and more stupid books, in which the information was[142] not merely useless, but even defied common sense. A small catechism on ‘Science,’ entitled ‘Why and Because,’ concluded a long list of inept questions with: ‘Why do pensioners and aged cottagers put their teapots on the hob to draw?’ In some books, facts of varying nature—of history, geography, grammar, etc.—were all jumbled together. It is not surprising that girls instructed by the parrot-like, inconsequent methods of such lesson-books, passed from school with no love of reading.
The Commissioners complained further, that though French and music were held to be the most important subjects to which a girl should devote herself, they were nearly always very badly taught. They spoke of time wasted at the piano; they calculated the thousands of hours given to music which was not worth hearing at the last. They gave instances of ludicrous mistakes in French, which no effort of visiting masters could improve into anything like a real knowledge of the language, because rudimentary grammar had never been mastered. They spoke of drawing taught with an equal disregard of thoroughness, and with still more disastrous result. ‘The common practice of masters touching up their pupils’ performances for exhibition at home fosters a habit of dishonesty, and that too prevalent tendency running through the whole of female education, the tendency to care more for appearance than reality, to seem rather than to be.’[43]
Some spoke of the absence of healthy interests, of the need for games, a need which appealed but little to Miss Beale, in whose own youth play was marked by its absence only. Many urged the necessity for founding in every town public schools similar to boys’ grammar[143] schools, where girls could obtain a sound education, without accomplishments, at a low cost.
These reports embody a number of facts concerning a state of things now happily passed away. Hundreds of small private schools might have read their doom in them, for the establishment of many public schools, endowed and otherwise, soon followed the inquiry. We see the poor sham education, with its wrong notions of the beautiful and the best, vanish without a regret. Yet, since all human effort has its worth and place, is it possible and fair to say one word above its grave? Was there no genuine wish to give pleasure pleading in the miserable pieces of the boarding-school young lady, and even in the painful drawings which the master’s touch failed to make tolerable? They testify at least to something out of the work-a-day sphere, to the desire for the ‘something afar,’ often the first step to a truer vision. Precious years of girlhood spent on the vain effort to attain accomplishments speak of some dim perception of the refinement and uplifting which men look for in women. Ill-devised, badly attempted, poorly carried out, the thought of giving delight was not only mercenary in aim; behind it was some consciousness of a real human need. The educators of women to-day should know better than to despise its pleading, however imperfectly expressed. ‘May I not have one ornamental one?’ said a brother when a third sister was about to devote herself to obtaining certificates for mathematics.
Nine ladies, including Miss Emily Davies, Miss Buss, and Miss Beale, were asked to give evidence before the Commission. Miss Beale’s, which was taken in 1865, is of double interest, at once touching the state of girls’ education in general, and the advance being made in the[144] Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. She took with her a hundred entrance examination papers arranged in order for inspection. Actuated perhaps by the marvellous carefulness which lost nothing, and seeing a use even in what would often be considered waste papers, as well as by the definite aim of preserving a record of progress, she had kept all the answers written by her pupils to entrance examination questions. With the College papers, she showed also some written by children in one of the national schools at Cheltenham, in order that the Commissioners might make a comparison for themselves.
On being questioned, Miss Beale explained in detail the whole system of the College, interesting the Commissioners in the method of teaching Euclid, one which at some points antedated by many years the present teaching of geometry in the public schools, and which has lately been adopted by the universities. At a time when schoolboys were learning Euclid by heart, Miss Beale was teaching it to girls by a method of explanation which they had to follow and finally reproduce without any learning by rote.
With regard to the teaching of Holy Scripture she said, ‘Each class teacher takes her own class, and that, I think, very important’; but on this subject little was said.
On the question of discipline and moral difficulties she explained that the government of the College was chiefly by personal influence, and that her plan was to make use of very simple means, such as changing the seat of a child who was suspected of being dishonest in her work. ‘It is a small thing, but it indicates want of trust, and it is by small things we govern.’ Such discipline obviously appeared slight to Dr. Storrar, who asked on hearing it,[145] ‘Perhaps girls are more sensitive than boys in such matters?’ ‘I will not attempt to decide,’ replied Miss Beale, ‘but my opinion is that they are not.’
Asked her opinion on a system of examination, Miss Beale recommended a general Board for the examination of teachers, to be founded with national sanction, and an inspection of the schools under the management of those who had passed the examination. ‘There is one other point,’ she added: ‘the cause might be helped on by the establishment of a model school for the training of teachers; I hardly know how such would work.’
The evidence of the Commission, published in 1868, produced a great impression on Mrs. William Grey and her sister, Miss Shireff. Under their able leadership there was formed, in 1871, ‘The National union for Improving the Education of Women,’ for the purpose of organising effort and helping to create a sounder public opinion with regard to education itself. The work of this society led two years later to the foundation of the Girls’ Public Day-School Company. By this agency, which was commercial as well as educational, High Schools were established in most of the important towns of England. There followed the numerous independent efforts and companies which have covered the country with a network of secondary schools for girls. In 1872, Miss Buss giving up her private property in her very successful school, by an act of self-sacrifice and generosity made it a public school by placing it in trust. A lower school was also established in Camden Town under the same management.
Miss Emily Davies also found her work aided by the Commission. She was largely instrumental in the opening of Local Examinations to girls. The foundation of the first women’s college at a university was laid by her[146] when, in 1873, the college she had opened at Hitchin four years earlier was removed to Cambridge, where it became known as Girton. This step was perhaps even less ............