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‘O lift your natures up:

Embrace our aims.’

Tennyson, The Princess, ii.

‘It was a year full of great suffering mingled with a peace which the world cannot give. … I look on this as one of the most profitable years of my life, but I could not long have borne the strain of work and anxiety.’

Thus, long after, when in the distance of years the events of earlier life could be seen in their relation to each other and to the future, Miss Beale wrote of the year at Casterton. But she did not often speak of it. To the end it gave her pain to go in thought over that time of loneliness and strain. Even late in life, if she entered into conversation about it, she would turn from the subject saying it distressed her too much; ‘some other time she would try’ to speak of it. But, none the less, she knew she had gained much at Casterton. She, who was ever ready to learn from mistakes, from pain, from adverse circumstances, gratefully acknowledged her debt to all that had shown her the real difficulties of her vocation, and her own weakness, and which had deepened her consciousness of the only source of strength. Some lives are led so much at haphazard, that it really hardly appears to matter whether at any given period they have taken one direction or another. In the lives of those who, like Dorothea Beale, are always conscious of an over-ruling and ordering Power, every year is not only known, but seen to have its place. The very errors, nay failures, are sunk deep into the foundations to become supports to the House of Life which, under the direction of the Master Builder, is rendered more stately with each added touch of Time. Hence, this year—not a successful one, as success is generally reckoned—has its special interest.

It was a year in which she learned much, not only about herself individually, but of feminine human nature in general. Those matters which she longed—and longed ineffectually at the time—to re-arrange in the system and time-tables she found existing at Casterton, prepared her for the organisation of the great school to which she was shortly afterwards to be called. Daily contact with many, who were more or less out of sympathy with her, must have been useful for one whose work was largely to be in the direction of influence on women and girls of varying natures and opinions. Doubtless the very loneliness of the position was bracing to her sensitive nature. ‘Above all,’ she had written to Mr. Plumptre when she accepted it, ‘it involves leaving home.’ She had seen from the first how hard a trial this would be to her, but strength and insight were won out of the suffering it cost.

The manuscript account from which the opening words of this chapter are taken, and which has been quoted before, was written many years ago. As late as 1905 Miss Beale wrote to Canon Burton, the present vicar of Casterton and chaplain to the school, that she felt she owed much to it, and ‘in grateful remembrance of her connection with it’ founded a scholarship from the school to Cheltenham. The first Casterton-Beale scholar is now at the Ladies’ College.

There were many reasons why Dorothea Beale could neither be happy nor rightly appreciated at Casterton in 1857. She went at a difficult moment when the school had not recovered from the relaxed discipline consequent on the troubles of the year before. There had been a serious outbreak of scarlet fever, the Lady Superintendent herself being one of the victims. The head-teacher had left in September, and it was not convenient to supply her place before the end of the half-year. The ‘School for Clergymen’s Daughters’ is one, like many others, of which it is the reverse of disparagement to say that its present is far above its past. And it is permissible to think that if Miss Beale had found herself in any other large boarding-school of the period, she would have encountered many of the same difficulties and disappointments as those which beset her life at Casterton. Of this school she wrote much later, describing it as she felt it to be when she was there, that it was ‘in an unhealthy state. There was a spirit of open irreligion and a spirit of defiance very sad to witness; but the constant restraints, the monotonous life, the want of healthy amusements were in a great measure answerable for this.’[20] A strange tale this to us, who know of the walks and rambles, the games and matches enjoyed by the girls of Casterton to-day.

But the causes of her dissatisfaction were by no means due entirely to the school, for the engagement seems to have been entered upon on Miss Beale’s part without a real understanding of all that it involved. Her father hints this when he writes, ‘perhaps we were to blame in not learning more.’ She was engaged, not by the Lady Superintendent, but by a member of the Committee, who probably did not explain matters so fully as a woman might have done. The work was taken up in a moment of impulse, as if she were glad of the opportunity it suggested of sending in her resignation to Queen’s College, instead of waiting till Christmas, as she had at first intended. Those who knew her best did not expect her to be happy in it. Mr. Plumptre wrote: ‘I am glad to hear you have found so important a work before you as that at Casterton. It may have altered within the last few years, as otherwise I should not have thought its tone, religious as well as social, likely to be congenial to you.’

She had never lived away from home for any length of time. The short periods of school life had been shared with sisters. The north was an unknown land with which the Beale family had no connection. She knew nothing of country life. She would be entirely among strangers, and that alone, for a shy and sensitive nature, is often a great trial, while boarding-school life, such as existed at Casterton, was practically unknown to her. The salary was smaller than what she had received at Queen’s College. But in leaving Queen’s College she lost far more than salary. There she had been a beloved teacher, a valued tutor whose resignation was deplored; at Casterton she was simply a new governess. Her judgment was surely at fault in thus hastily and almost impulsively accepting such a post. Though she may have greeted the offer as guidance in her difficulty about leaving Queen’s, she must have known that at Casterton it would be impossible for her to work in accord with religious opinions which were alien to her; also that in going so far she was cutting off much that was congenial and delightful from her life—such as home, friends, libraries, lectures.

Though Mr. Beale obviously doubted if his daughter could be happy in the atmosphere of Casterton, he did not fail to perceive the ideal side of the work there. Appreciating the aims and generosity of the founders of the school, he held that from the great advantages it offered, it ought to become a national institution. She too went to her post there in something of a missionary spirit. Her success with her classes, and with pupils of different ages, justified her in feeling that she would be able to introduce fresh and better methods, while the very fact that a teacher of her individual experience had been chosen pointed to the belief that the authorities were anxious to bring the school into line with the advance of women’s education.

Casterton is a small village, near Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland, where that county touches Lancashire and Yorkshire. Even to-day railway communication is defective, and the country thinly populated, so that the school in its isolated position is constrained to be as self-sufficing as possible. The beauty of its surroundings may surely be reckoned among its advantages, for it is placed amid lovely country within sight of Ingleborough. Members of the school speak with delight of rambles over the surrounding fells. Perhaps Miss Beale’s habit of thinking over her lessons out of doors began here, for she afterwards told Miss Alston of the long lonely walks she used to take at Casterton.

This well-known school was founded in 1823 by Mr. Carus Wilson in order to help the clergy of the Church of England, principally those of the northern dioceses. Many of the clergy of the north were known to be absolutely unable to provide any education for their children, who at home led the simplest life with bare necessaries only. Several of these were received, boarded, educated, and partially clothed free, and the terms for all were ludicrously small. These facts should be remembered when comment is made upon the régime at Casterton, or at Cowan Bridge, where the school was originally placed, a position far less favourable and healthy than its present one.

It should also be remembered that Dorothea Beale had never herself known what it was to be poor; she could hardly realise, for instance, the comfort that might exist in the uniform school dress for children whose parents were actually too poor to provide them with proper clothing.

As an institution the school was destined not only to assist the poor clergy, but, springing as it did from devoted religious effort, to save souls and promote the highest kind of education. It was from the first definitely associated with those ‘Calvinistic opinions’ on account of which the Bishop of Chester had rejected its founder for ordination in 1814.[21] The dark horror of Calvinism, permitted doubtless as a scourge after much open irreligion and careless living, was in mercy overruled in countless instances for the conviction of sin, and generally to prepare the way for a wider and more comprehending acceptance of the grace which is in Christ Jesus. But its direct results on the education of the young were disastrous indeed. Hearts, by its agency, were turned to stone, or depressed into hopeless terror; worst of all, religious forms, phraseology, even emotions were assumed by those who were prone to self-deception, or over anxious to please.

About 1845 Mr. Carus Wilson’s health broke down as a consequence of his unsparing and strenuous labours, and the management of his schools passed into the hands of others. In 1857 the Clergy Daughters’ School was governed by a Committee of six clergymen, all personal friends of the founder, men of good standing in the neighbourhood. Archdeacon Evans was Chairman. This Committee sought to obtain the best teachers possible for what was then—even more than now—an out-of-the-way place, as far as the centres of education were concerned. They also aimed at fitting the girls in the school to earn their own living.

High testimonials were given to Miss Beale by the professors and lady-visitors of Queen’s College, on her appointment as head-teacher at Casterton. One from Prebendary Mackenzie is of special interest, as it shows that in accepting the work she had not in any way identified herself with the particular religious views then prevailing in the institution.