‘All the great mystics have been energetic and influential, and their business capacity is specially noted in a curiously large number of cases.’ Inge, Bampton Lectures, Preface vii.
One outcome of Miss Beale’s time of personal spiritual distress, one which bore directly on what she considered as St. Hilda’s work, was an arrangement made for the first time in 1884 for devotional meetings for teachers at the end of the summer term. After 1885, when a second gathering took place, they were held alternately with the biennial Guild meetings. Like much of Miss Beale’s work, these Quiet Days, as they were called, resulted rather from a definite idea than from a formal plan. Their arrangement and character appear to have been due to the occurrence of certain conditions and circumstances while Miss Beale was forming a decision to help others who might be suffering as she herself had done. Plans for this help began to pass through her mind as early as the summer of 1882, while she was herself, as she would have expressed it, ‘in the fire.’ In July 1882 she wrote to a friend:—
‘July 25, 1882.
‘What occurred to me was this—that something of a more definite Retreat might be held for teachers during the vacation. Mr. Wilkinson had at Christmas some Quiet Days which were[287] very valuable and helpful. Still these were not quite like a regular Retreat:—because very few who went were able to be really quiet in London lodgings, and so could not get the absolute silence and repose which make a Retreat valuable.... Most of the regular Retreats are too general to give teachers the special help, and many are so distinctly High Church, that one could not venture to recommend young teachers to go.... I can’t accept the decision “nothing can be done”; theories of distress which reach me as the old light seems to go out, and the dark waves close in, are too distressing. We cannot administer “a universal pill”; but we can to some extent support and comfort those who are passing through the darkness; one can out of one’s own experience tell them that the stars will shine out once more; one can teach some few simple lessons of faith and patience and hope; one can show that there are a priori and a posteriori grounds for the faith we hold,—though mysteries unfathomable remain in every department of thought; and in such a meeting, personal help and advice might be given to meet special individual difficulties. It is here that the Christian Evidence Society fails. Teachers have not time for much reading and there are masses of books, many of them containing very little matter and plenty of words and arguments, which are useless for our special difficulties. Of course Retreats are not simply for such intellectual treatment of doubts, and one would look for a quickening of faith by the special services and united prayers. So I thought it might seem good to hold some sort of Retreat in Oxford next year.’
It was not till the beginning of 1883 while attending a Retreat in Warrington Crescent—a time to which she often recurred as of much help and strengthening—that Miss Beale was able definitely to consider what might be done. There were friends to whom she could turn, who took trouble to help her by thinking over the matter from her point of view. Among these may specially be mentioned the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson, the late Bishop of St. Andrews, and Canon Body. To Mrs. Benson she wrote:—
‘Epiphany, 1883.
‘Whilst others were rejoicing at the recent appointment I[288] have been conscious of a mixed feeling, for the Archbishop of Canterbury will not be able to do what the Bishop of Truro had half promised, in the way of helping by some kind of Retreat, teachers who have difficulties of belief. Mr. Wilkinson has also been unable to give us the Quiet Days for which we had hoped. So some Head Mistresses, who were in Retreat, and felt the great need, asked for special prayers for teachers in Colleges and High Schools, and that some way might be found to help them. Mr. Body responded very heartily to our request, and desired us to make it the subject of our special petition each week during the year. Afterwards in conversation, he spoke of the valuable help you had been able to give, and this has set me thinking whether we could not ask you to make your knowledge and experience more widely useful.
‘Our main difficulty would be to meet the doubts of those who have them, without suggesting doubts to those who have not been called to encounter this trial.
‘It has occurred to me, that perhaps there might be something on the model of the Guild for the Sick, combining the principle of the “Instruction by Correspondence” classes.
‘ ... Perhaps you may think me intruding—my acquaintance with you is so slight—and unpractical, but the need is great and immediate, and I think you will feel this too. I have gained such painful experience, both from within and without, of the misery of those who have once seen and then lost the sight of the invisible; those who have left, especially those who become teachers, often turn to me for help, which I feel so incompetent to give, and which I have not time to do properly. One is writing to me now, who is in a school in which there are sixteen teachers, ten of whom have given up all outward sign of the religious life. I long to be able to refer those who need guidance to some who are able to help them. Every other trial can be borne, but this is utter misery.
‘ ... It is not enough to preach sermons, and print books, as well might we furnish a treatise on Arithmetic to a child whose sum is wrong; we must find out and show why it is wrong. The Church did not make its way by such means at first, at least not without daily discussions “in the school of one Tyrannus.” Of course I do not overlook that some of the difficulties of belief are moral, but these could be met by the means I suggest.
‘I think it is very important that members should be able to enquire anonymously; come “by night” as it were, and should be assured that no one would try to find out the name.’
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To Canon Body, who had sent her a letter full of sympathy and interest, she wrote:—
‘I am so glad you wrote thus freely, for it has made me understand better how much you can feel for those in this deepest sorrow, and yet have a sure and certain hope that they will rise out of that Hades. It is, as you say, most cheering to find movements of the same kind in different places. If there is a spiritual tide, the waters can only be lifted by extra mundane force.’
Gradually the plan shaped itself. For a time Miss Beale hoped to be able to arrange at Oxford a Retreat followed by a conference, with lectures and discussions on theological subjects. This proved to be impracticable. Then she sought to carry out the plan at Cheltenham. She was advised to limit herself to two or three days of quiet study and devotion with addresses. She would not, however, relinquish the idea of some kind of conference. The scheme stated in the following extract from a letter was very much what was actually carried out:—
‘I hope the archbishop will be so good as to ask some one to give the addresses in the Quiet Days.... I should be there and a few of my friends, head mistresses, and we should make our subsequent lessons harmonise with the previous instruction, so that there should be unity. I do not mean to give lessons on methods of teaching in the ordinary mechanical sense; but on our vocation and the moral aspects of our work, and then I thought we could get some one to give Bible lessons on the books set by Oxford and Cambridge, some one who knows the difference between dead and living teaching. We must have enough to occupy those who come for the whole month, though I expect only a few of those who come will remain so long. There will, I find, be a large proportion of earnest teachers who will be able to help and strengthen the weak.’
The Rev. V. H. Stanton[78] kindly acceded to Miss Beale’s request to give the addresses at the three Quiet Days which opened the conference in 1884. In the following[290] year Canon Mason did this. It is noticeable that on almost every occasion the conductor of this Retreat for teachers was drawn from the ranks of Cambridge. The reason for this Miss Beale often explained, as in the following letter written as late as April 1904:—
‘I have had nearly all the book you sent read to me; there are some beautiful thoughts, but I don’t feel quite at home in the general atmosphere. It is difficult to describe, but I remember when Archbishop Benson was choosing a Conductor for our Retreat, he said one day, he would rather choose from the Cambridge school of thought. I asked him what was the difference between Cambridge and Oxford, and he said, “The latter began with the thought of sin, the former with the thought of the Divine Life in man.”
‘Some day when we meet I may be able to make clearer what I mean.’
Mr. Stanton’s earnest sympathetic addresses were greatly valued by those who were present in 1884. Not less prized was the generous kindness of the Lady Principal in the weeks which followed the Retreat. Miss Beale not only gave frequent addresses on various subjects, continuing in some the line of thought begun on the Quiet Days, she was also constantly at the service of any member of the party for discussion or counsel.
‘I expected certainly to see something of you,’ one who had been present wrote afterwards to her, ‘but that you would constitute yourself the mother of the party, be with us at meals, and do so very much for our improvement and entertainment was quite undreamt of. Indeed, we were all touched by it. I think those quiet days at the beginning gave a special tone of earnestness to the gathering.’
Mrs. Soulsby wrote of the ‘help and comfort you gave to me and so many others by arranging that Retreat. I have never been present at anything so calculated to do steady and lasting good.’
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And many spoke of the ‘sense of fellowship’ which had been gained by meeting so many with like aims and interests; they told how they were going back to work with ‘new hope for the future,’ or with ‘many new lights and helpful suggestions to aid’ them. Some said the work of teaching had been represented to them in a new light, some that the conference helped them to a new start. One told how she was ‘in danger of making shipwreck when your wise counsel saved me.’ Another said: ‘One thing struck me very much, the fellow-feeling and anxiety to help that teachers who have been at Cheltenham have for each other.’
More than a hundred teachers, many of them belonging to Cheltenham, were present for the first days of the conference in 1884. Some twenty outside teachers remained for the whole month. The time was long enough to foster real intimacy. A great deal of time and thought had been devoted to arrangements beforehand, in order that all might get the utmost benefit from the time. In this Miss Beale received much willing co-operation from her own staff, and Miss Caines lent Fauconberg House and her servants. Miss Beale was specially anxious that during the Quiet Days all should have the opportunity of keeping well the silence which was observed. Those who had no rooms of their own had little sitting-rooms assigned them in the College, the music-rooms being available for this purpose. That part of the Cheltenham world which still regarded Miss Beale with suspicion and to whom a Retreat appeared, even as late as 1884, to be a dangerous High Church innovation, raised a cry of alarm. The music-rooms had been turned into cells! It is not known what the word implied to those who made the outcry, and it was soon silenced, but it caused a little annoyance at the time.
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The month passed in teaching and helping, though gladly given out of her own holidays, was an undoubted physical strain to Miss Beale. She wrote to Mrs. Benson:—
‘I wish I had never said I would try to write a paper for Thursday at the Health Exhibition. I do not like to leave even for a day, as one ought to go on trying to help those who remain. We do feel so grateful for all the time and thought you and the Archbishop have been good enough to give us, especially in the selection of Mr. Stanton. For myself, I should never have had the courage to go on; (one gets nervous)....’
And she was tired. The last entry in her diary for that month is this:—
‘August 27.—End of month at Fauconberg. Last address not good, and result of neglect.’
Yet Miss Beale probably felt such a strain far less than any other head-mistress would have done, so absorbingly interesting to her was this kind of work. She always looked back with great pleasure on that time. She treasured the letters she received afterwards from those who had been present, dated from it lasting friendships made with some who had come from other schools, and felt it had drawn her nearer to some of her own teachers.
Miss Beale’s outside interests were concerned, as was natural, chiefly with education. With every educational movement made during the last fifty years in the direction of progress she became to some extent associated. She presided at the first meeting of head-mistresses held in 1874 at Myra Lodge, when the Association for Head-mistresses was founded with Miss Buss as president. ‘I see,’ said Miss Beale of this meeting in 1906, ‘it is recorded that I presided. My recollections are only of lying in great pain on the sofa and taking only a feeble part in the discussion. I little thought that I should be[293] allowed to address a conference which more than thirty years after numbers over two hundred and thirty members.... At our first meeting certain principles were asserted which tended to settle some difficult questions.’ Miss Beale here doubtless refers to the very first resolution passed by this aristocratic body, which was to the effect that no school can work satisfactorily unless the head-mistress be entirely responsible for its internal management. Miss Ridley, in writing of Miss Buss,[79] (to ‘whose insight and foresight,’ said Miss Beale, ‘the founding of the Association was entirely due,’) has shown that the passing of this resolution was in itself almost a raison d’être for the Association. For the rightful position of a head-mistress was not recognised without some difficulty and controversy. The governing bodies of girls’ schools could not at first be selected on the ground of interest and experience in educational matters. Another resolution passed on that occasion was to the effect that an examination to test the power of teachers is desirable.
On the death of Miss Buss, in 1895, Miss Beale became president until 1897, when her term of office expired. She never sought re-election, her increasing deafness making it difficult for her to conduct meetings. She thought a great deal of the importance of the Association and of the discussions which took place at its meetings, and strove in every way to render them not only earnest but fair-minded. ‘I hope,’ she said on one occasion, ‘that our assemblies will not become such as the discussions in Parliament, merely formal, every one having taken a side before and being unmoved by anything said.’ Miss Beale several times read papers to the Association, and in later years the deferential welcome[294] she received from its members was very noticeable. Her last address, given on the request of the Association in June 1906, only a few months before her death, may be regarded as her farewell to the educational world.
When the Association for Assistant Mistresses was formed, Miss Beale regarded it at first with some anxiety. She feared the clash of interests and promotion of suspicion between a head and her staff. Later, when she understood the work of the Association, she received it into favour, and on one occasion addressed a meeting of the western branch at St. Hilda’s. Members of the Association were welcomed, and sometimes spent the morning at College when they came over for branch meetings. Miss Beale, too, was always willing to let those of her staff who belonged to the A.A.M. Committee go up to London to attend meetings in term time, and was pleased when it fell to Miss Lumby, as President of the Association, to give evidence together with Mrs. Withiel, before the Bryce Commission in 1895.
The Teachers’ Guild, founded by Miss Buss in 1883, met with warm support from the head-mistresses of the Association. A branch was started at Cheltenham in the following year, and a paper by Miss Beale read, she herself being indisposed at the time. She used her influence with her own teachers to join the Guild, and frequently addressed the branch meetings on such subjects as the Value of Examinations. In the Froebel Society she was also much interested and subscribed to it regularly. When the Church Schools’ Company was founded in 1883, Miss Beale became at once a member of the Council. She was proud that the College supplied head-mistresses to both the Graham Street and Baker Street Schools.
The hopefulness no increase of years or disappointment[295] could abate, the open mind ever quick to receive what was good and original from those younger and less experienced than herself, were seen in the way Miss Beale greeted the work of the Child-Study Association.
With her consent Miss Louch, then a member of the College staff, proceeded to America in 1894 to attend a course of lectures by Dr. Stanley Hall on child-study. On her return the Association was formed in Edinburgh, and in the same year a branch was started in Cheltenham, with Miss Beale as local president. Before her death she was president of the whole Association, and presided over the conference held in Cheltenham in 1906, the year of her death. When the Paidologist, the organ of the Child-Study Association, was started, Miss Beale contributed largely to the guarantee fund, and for five years was a member of the Magazine Committee. She promoted the work of the Association by trying to get the College staff, boarding-house mistresses, and parents of pupils to join and assist in it.
Miss Beale was among those consulted by Miss Mason when, in 1888, she definitely sought to give the Parents’ Educational union, which had had a successful year’s work in Bradford, a national name and character. The work of the society appealed greatly to Miss Beale, and the Cheltenham branch was one of the earliest founded. Her name appears among those of the vice-presidents in 1892.
To pass beyond the limits of the work in which, from the fact of her position, the Lady Principal of Cheltenham was called upon to take a part, it may be noticed that she was always much interested in Sunday-school teaching, and wrote many articles upon it. Several of these have been printed. Her interest was caused largely by the numbers of old pupils who took[296] up this work, and who came to her for advice about it, as well as to the congenial nature of religious instruction. Dissatisfied with the methods or want of method prevailing in many Sunday-schools, she had a high ideal of the work for the sake both of teacher and children, and was always ready with sympathy and suggestion. To an old pupil engaged on a paper intended to point out some existing ills in Sunday-schools she wrote in 1880:—
‘I should say begin with all the good done—the necessity for them at the time, etc. Then speak of the evils, and with each sort suggest a remedy, and admit that the evils are not universal. Try to put it in rather a different shape, and I think it would do good in overthrowing some self-complacency. Especially is it an evil when quite raw girls—some ignorant girls such as we have at College—pretend to teach. Children accustomed to proper teaching of course fidget. I should have been a little rebel myself, if I had had to hear the wretched stuff that some children do at Sunday School. But it does, when done properly, draw classes together.’
Institutions and societies designed to help the poor of Cheltenham came of course before Miss Beale’s notice. She never, however, allowed herself to be drawn from the pressing requirements of her own work, so as to become acquainted with the details of that which, to some extent, grows up round every church. She was, indeed, on principle, chary in her support of this, maintaining that in a town there was generally great waste of funds and labours, owing to the lack of combination. She wrote as early as 1881 in reference to Cheltenham:—
‘I am so anxious that we should all work in the direction pointed out by our Rural Dean, get all Church people to work together as one, for works which cannot or ought not to be merely parochial, and in all charitable work, wherever it is possible, to get all, whether Church or not, to join in opposing[297] all forms of evil.... I think we should take works in order of importance. I may be wrong, but I have regretted the erection of Church steeples when there was other work that seemed to me of more importance [left unsupported]. I think the increase of offertories in churches, good as it is in many ways, has tended to hinder united work in the town. I do not know whether there ever could be a sort of Council for the administration of at least part of the funds so collected; but it does seem as if the present plan gave too much to some districts and too little to others, and left some institutions which have a claim upon all, with scarcely any support, because what is everybody’s business is nobody’s.... The laity have very little influence in the distribution of money collected in churches, which tends always to become a larger proportion of what is given away, so that much of the power to organise united work must rest with the clergy. And living forces, which are enormously more important than money, are wasted by “congregationalism.” Could there not be some larger association of Church workers from which some sort of administrative council might select persons suitable for any special work? Could not work sometimes be done collectively, instead of each clergyman doing it separately for his own congregation? I do hope that more and more, in one work after another, we may unite our forces, and if once people can be induced to look into the evils which exist at their very doors, they will be moved to work with one heart and mind to remove what is a disgrace to our town.’
Among the institutions of Cheltenham, for which Miss Beale specially claimed the need of united action, was the Working Men’s College. She herself on one occasion read a paper there, her subject being ‘Self-support and Self-government from the point of view, not of the individual, but of the College.’ The paper, simple and direct, shows how Miss Beale could throw herself into the minds of those she addressed, appealing to all that was best in them, while at the same time putting her own thoughts into them. It embodies her favourite theories of the danger of helping people through gifts:—
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‘I do not think there are many belonging to this College who could not pay a few shillings annually. Self-denial adds value to energy.... Everybody does not agree with me. Some think you will misunderstand,—think we do not want help. I do not think you will, to judge by my own feelings. I like to be independent. You look at the Ladies’ College and say, “You have got all you want.” But time was when we were very poor, so poor that our Council said, ... we will have but another year’s trial and then shut up. We never said we would beg people to help us: we would make it self-supporting, or it should die.... I feel certain if you working-men were to say, We will take the management ourselves, and it shall be a success, that it would be, and I think that if other people manage and pay for it, that some of the strongest and most independent would stand aloof.... I am quite sure that our College would not have been what it is if we had had money to fall back upon. I might myself have left the helm and gone to sit quietly in the cabin while the vessel drifted on to the rocks.’
Among Miss Beale’s papers there exists a very simple address entitled, ‘Is Death the End?’ She intended to read it at a little mission-room, maintained in a very poor street by her friends, Mr. and Mrs. James Owen. The subject was one which had taken strong hold of her fancy at the time. Some one had discovered a dragon-fly emerging from its chrysalis on a water-lily in the little pond which then existed in the Fauconberg House garden adjoining the College grounds. It was taken to Miss Beale, who saw enacted before her own eyes a living parable of resurrection-life. Her childlike delight in this came out in almost every Scripture lesson she gave that summer. The pond was watched for chrysalids; they were taken into the classrooms for the children to see the creatures creep out of their tombs, lie soft and sleepy for a little, then sail away on new-found wings. This true story of the dragon-fly and all it could teach of life, through death, Miss Beale longed to tell to Mrs. Owen’s poor friends. She wrote it carefully, and had little illustrations made; but the lecture[299] was never given. ‘Mrs. Owen would not let me,’ she said sadly, ‘but I think I could have interested them in the dragon-fly.’ But Mrs. Owen was probably right, since the audience for whom the paper was intended was such as Miss Beale knew only in the pages of Browning’s Christmas Eve.
In the work of the Church abroad, i............