The Times Great Women's Lives

by Sue Corbett

  In 1872 Mrs Stowe carried through a successful campaign for the American Literary Lecture Bureau of Boston, when she delivered a course of 40 readings from her own works in the principal cities of the New England States. She made another reading tour in the West the following year, but she would never undertake a third, although she frequently read on behalf of charitable objects. Mrs Stowe had now left Florida and returned to the North, where she permanently resided. For some years before her death Mrs Stowe’s mind was more or less clouded, but her physical health remained strong and vigorous almost to the very last.

  In all the relations of private life Mrs Stowe was widely beloved. Her writings are conceived in a high and elevated vein, and had it not been for the unfortunate controversy she provoked on the subject of Lord Byron there would have been no female American writer who would have been held in such high and general esteem in England and Europe. Mrs Stowe took a deep interest in the religious, temperance, and philanthropic questions of the time, as well as in all movements for raising the social, intellectual, and moral status of the less fortunate members of her own sex.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, writer and abolitionist, was born on June 14, 1811. She died on July 1, 1896, aged 85

  ROSA BONHEUR

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  FRENCH ARTIST WHO RANKED WITH ENGLAND’S LANDSEER AS A PAINTER OF ANIMALS

  MAY 27, 1899

  We learn with regret from our Paris correspondent of the death of Mlle Rosa Bonheur, which took place at the village of By, on the border of the Forest of Fontainebleau, late on Thursday night. The whole world of art is thus the poorer for the loss of a great painter. It is somewhat strange that, though pictorial art is a profession, open to all, in which one would expect women to excel, the great female artists may almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. Mlle Bonheur was an exception, and a notable one, to the rule which gives her sex a great deal of facility in art but no great degree of distinction. Nor had she any very exceptional advantages, though she belonged to a family of painters. Her father, Raymond Bonheur, was a painter, and so were his two sons, François Auguste and Isidore Jules, as well as his other daughter, Juliette, Mme Peyrol. At the Salon of 1847 the father, the two sons, and Rosa were all exhibitors.

  Rosalie Bonheur was born at Bordeaux in 1822, and is said to have shown at a very early age the direction in which her tastes lay. Her delight as a child was to cut out animals in paper. She was hardly seven years old when her family removed to Paris, where she was sent to a boys’ school. She lost her mother while she was still a mere child, and was then apprenticed to the uncongenial business of a dressmaker, an occupation which she disliked and did not long pursue. She preferred to frequent the Louvre, making copies of the pictures there, and selling them to advantage. She achieved her first triumph when she was only 19 years old, two of her pictures, “Chèvres et Moutons” and “Deux Lapins,” being hung at the Salon. Further successes followed so soon that she is said to have sold one of her works for £600 at the early age of 24. Her father married a second time in 1845, and she was then enabled to pursue her own special studies of animal life in the country. She learned animal anatomy at the abattoirs, and made many sketches for a picture, “Boeufs Rouges du Cantal,” which was awarded the third medal at the Salon of 1846. It should be noted, however, that she did not entirely confine herself to animal painting, but also produced, both in the earlier and later parts of her career, several landscapes of considerable merit. But undoubtedly it is as a painter of animals, and especially of cattle and horses, that she was now becoming famous.

  The most marked of her early successes was in 1848 — namely, her “Labourage Nivernais,” which is now at the Luxembourg and will by and by, now that she is no more, be transferred to the Louvre. A medal was awarded her for it. In the following year she lost her father, who was very proud of his promising daughter, and she felt this bereavement so keenly that she did not again exhibit till 1853, when her “Marché aux Chevaux” was one of the chief attractions of the Salon. It is probably her best known work. A replica of it is in the National Gallery, and engravings of it have been popular in this country. The original has been exhibited in America, and has since been sold for £12,000. Certainly it shows her art at its best, and combines excellent composition and texture with a power, not always fully possessed by animal painters, of drawing horses in motion. It would be superfluous to name all the many works that have come from her studio since the “Horse Fair.” All the Salons during the Second Empire exhibited her pictures, and brought not only money, but the honourable recognition of the Emperor and Empress. “Sheep at the Seaside” was bought by the Empress in 1867. But long before that, in 1855, Mlle Bonheur had bought an estate in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where the Emperor was an occasional visitor, and the Empress, in 1865, personally invested her with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Many years later she received from President Carnot the insignia of an officer of the Legion. She was the only Frenchwoman in that grade.

  Happily, none of the events of 1870 either drove her from Fontainebleau or even caused her to interrupt her work. Fontainebleau, during the siege of Paris, cannot have been a convenient residence, but the Crown Prince of Prussia, following classical precedent, “bade spare” the artist’s house and estate, and paid her a visit, which, though he was accompanied by Uhlans, she stoutly refused to receive. Here, at least, the invader was repulsed. The story goes that he was invited to see the pictures in the studio, but was refused admission to the presence of the lady herself. So, both in war and peace, Rosa Bonheur continued to paint, perhaps without greatly adding to the great reputation won by her in the fifties and sixties, but always in such a manner as to command the applause and attention of the artistic public. One of her later achievements was a large landscape, “Haymaking in Auvergne,” which was sent to the Paris International Exhibition of 1885.

  She was, however, as we have said, par excellence an animal painter, and one of the very best. This is by no means the kind of art which lady artists usually regard with favour; but, having discovered her particular gift, she cultivated it with great industry and zeal. She adopted a masculine costume in order that she might more conveniently attend horse fairs, and visited them regularly in search of subjects. Her portraits, in a costume that was rational enough when it was worn for a good reason, must be familiar to many of our readers. She even kept a species of menagerie of her own, and her “Lion at Home,” exhibited in London in 1882, was painted from one of its temporary inhabitants. Part of her studio, too, was boarded off so as to serve as a stable for her more ordinary models. In short, genius, force of character, and singleness of purpose made her, within her chosen range, a great artist. She may rank worthily with Landseer, and possibly in some respects above him. Her technical knowledge, both of painting and of animals, was not inferior to his. Sentiment and humour — the sentiment, for example, of Landseer’s wounded swans, and the humour of “High Life and Low Life” — she did not aim at; but in thorough knowledge of such animals as horses, cattle, and sheep she was wholly unsurpassed. Her powers were recognized not only in France, but in England, America, Germany, and Belgium. On the Imperial Russian visit to Paris their Majesties expressed a wish to see her, and she was one of those who escorted them through the Louvre. This, however, was a solitary exception to the secluded habits of her later years, and she was almost inaccessible to strangers, not even answering the letters of proposed visitors. She was made a member of the Institute of Antwerp in 1868, and in 1880 the King of the Belgians gave her the Cross of the Order of Leopold, and the King of Spain the Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. In both cases she was the first lady to be thus distinguished.

  Rosa Bonheur, artist, was born on March 16, 1822. She died on May 25, 1899, aged 77

  DOROTHEA BEALE

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  EDUCATIONAL PIONEER AND PRINCIPAL OF CHELTENHAM LADIES’ COLLEGE

  NOVEMBER 10, 1906

  We announce with much regret that Miss Dorothea Beale,
principal of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, died about noon yesterday. Last week she underwent a slight operation, which was successful, and a rapid recovery was expected. On Monday, however, there was a change for the worse, and she was found to be suffering from nervous prostration.

  Miss Dorothea Beale was a pioneer, in the strictest dictionary meaning of the term — one who goes before to prepare the way. The “way” which she prepared was that of a rational education for her own sex. She once said of herself, “I was born in the dark ages and have witnessed the Renaissance.” Modesty forbade her to add, what a great host of contemporaries and followers will add for her, that she was foremost among those who made the Renaissance possible.

  The surroundings of her birth and childhood were favourable to the development of her character and capacity, and formed a suitable environment, fitting her for her life’s work. Her father, Mr Miles Beale, M.R.C.S., took an active interest in the improvement of the social and educational conditions of his time. He prompted the establishment of literary institutes, was a shareholder in the London Institution and one of the first members of the Society of Arts, and was himself a not infrequent lecturer on literary and scientific subjects. His daughter, Dorothea, was born in 1831, and among the influences moulding her character and aspirations she never failed to mention the name of her mother’s aunt, Mrs Cornwallis, and that of her cousin, Miss Caroline Cornwallis, a very remarkable woman, who, from early childhood, devoted herself to scholarship of all kinds, studied Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and German, philosophy, law and criminal procedure, and was the author of a number of books, well known in their day, called “Small Books on Great Subjects.” The influence of these relatives, though very helpful to Miss Beale at a later period of her intellectual development, was not sufficient to protect her from the pernicious pretence of education which was all that was available in the boarding school for young ladies of the early forties. She learnt by heart useless epitomes, and went through the usual course of Mangnall’s questions, and Pinnock’s catechisms. She referred in after life with some bitterness to the “noxious brood of catechisms” which impart information on such points as the number of prepositions which begin with “u,” the number of people who died of the Plague, the number of houses burnt in the Fire of London, and other entirely disconnected fragments of fact, or supposed fact, which then did duty as “education,” but bear as much resemblance to the real thing as a heap of loose pebbles does to a building.

  Whatever the demerits of her early education, it had at least one saving quality — it did not quench her desire for knowledge. She left school conscious that there was such a thing as learning, that there were vast tracts to be explored, and that her education, if begun, was only just begun. She read voraciously, taught herself Euclid, attended classes and lectures, and was especially influenced by the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, Mr Pullen, of Cambridge, who awakened in her a passion for mathematics. She was also early in her adolescence brought under the influence of deep religious feeling, and this remained a motive power guiding her thoughts and conduct to the end of her life. She has written of this herself, “Religion quickened the intellectual life, for sacramental teaching was, to the leaders of that movement, no narrow dogmatism, but the discovery of the river of the water of life, flowing through the whole desert of human existence, and making it rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

  Throughout her subsequent career as the creator and organizer of the largest and most successful of girls’ schools, the most intensely vital part of her work was rooted in her religion. It was a revelation of a spirit finely touched to fine issues to hear her read the Bible, and offer the prayers with which the school day at Cheltenham invariably begins. A strong Churchwoman, and a member of the council of the Church of England High Schools Company, she had no touch of the fanatic. The normal religious instruction of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, was according to the Church of England, but any parent was at liberty to withdraw a girl from it, and no teaching of the Catechism or any distinctively Church doctrine was ever suggested if Miss Beale knew a child to belong to a Dissenting family or to the Scotch Church. Her endeavour was to make the religious teaching practical as regards the daily duties of life, on which there is general agreement, rather than to dwell on points of doctrine on which differences arise.

  An epoch in the history of women’s education was the opening of Queen’s College, Harley-street, in 1846, mainly through the instrumentality of Dr (afterwards Archbishop) Trench, Professor Plumptre, and the Rev Frederic Denison Maurice. Miss Beale attended its opening lecture, and she and her sisters were among the first recipients of its certificates. The classes thus opened enabled her to read Sophocles and Plato with Dr Plumptre, Literature and Philosophy with Mr Maurice, and other subjects with equally eminent teachers. She now found the mental food which her earlier training had failed to give, and devoted herself to study with something which can only be described as rapture. She was appointed mathematical, and later also classical, tutor at Queen’s College, and soon showed herself as enthusiastic a teacher as she had been a learner. Her vacations, both at this time and afterwards, were frequently spent in Switzerland or Germany, visiting colleges, hearing lessons given, and profiting, and enabling her pupils later to profit, by improved methods which she then saw in practice. Her plan of teaching Euclid without a book, which she explained in her evidence given before the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1866, was largely based on what she had seen in Professor Weileman’s class in the Canton Schule at Zurich.

  She was always learning, always preserving the open mind, and ever ready to consider new and improved methods. Long before its now general adoption, she had given practical approval to the rational method of teaching foreign languages. Her plan was to begin with facts, names of things, short sentences, and so forth, and proceed thence to grammatical principles. She quoted with great approval a description by Dr Bryce, of Glasgow, of the way in which a teacher imparted to a class of boys a knowledge of Newton’s great discovery of gravitation. He did not tell them the result of Newton’s investigations, but “he enumerated the phenomena by which Newton arrived at it, taking care to present them in the order most likely to suggest it. As fact after fact was marshalled before them they became eager and excited more and more, for they saw that something new and great was coming; and when at last the array of phenomena was complete and the magnificent conclusion burst upon their sight, the whole class started from their seats with a scream of delight.” This sort of teaching, as Miss Beale was never weary of insisting, was real education. What a contrast did it not present to “the noxious breed of catechisms” of her youth!

  She held her posts at Queen’s College for seven years and then resigned because she was dissatisfied with the management. The professors of King’s College, to whom the credit of starting Queen’s was due, were too absolute in its management; some were unpunctual in their attendances; some were too much engaged in other work to give the time required for the correction of exercises and so forth; and Miss Beale felt particularly that there was a great want at Queen’s, as then constituted, arising from the absence of a strong womanly influence over the students. She next accepted the post of head teacher of the Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton, Charlotte Brontë’s “Lowood.” If there was too little supervision at Queen’s, there was too much at Casterton. The life was absolutely conventual and absolutely monotonous. The children were all dressed alike, and individual property in books or in clothes was discouraged. Books were in common and dresses were passed on from one to another. The children seldom went home; there was almost nothing to break the monotony of their lives; the Sundays were one continual round of lessons and services. Miss Beale was an unusually well-equipped teacher, but her acquirements failed to come up to the encyclopaedic knowledge which the managing committee of Casterton demanded. She was prepared to teach Scripture, classics, mathematics, arithmetic, and French and German; but she was expected also to teach ancient and modern history,
Church history, English literature, English composition and political and physical geography. When teaching meant nothing but hearing pupils repeat passages out of a book, it was possible to combine all the ’ologies in the person of one unfortunate governess, but that was not what Miss Beale understood by education. She only remained at Casterton a year, and resigned wearied in mind and body.

  Six months later, in 1858, a vacancy occurred in the post of headmistress of the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, and Miss Beale entered upon the work with which her name will always be associated. Cheltenham was the only proprietary college for girls then in existence. In 1858 it was in its fourth year from its commencement. It had opened with 80 pupils, a number which a little later increased to over 100. But after this a period of decline set in, and when Miss Beale took the command the numbers had fallen to 69. She found at Cheltenham a school framed, as regards classes and removes, on the experience of the best boys’ schools, but a great part of the teaching required remodelling. No science was taught, no mathematics, no ancient languages. Miss Beale proceeded with caution in the reforms she desired to introduce. Notwithstanding Sydney Smith’s argument in 1810 that the great institutions of nature do not depend on teaching women a little more or a little less, that learning Latin would not dry up the fountain of a woman’s affections, and that no female mathematician had been known to forsake her infant for a quadratic equation, she found in full force the old superstition that girls would be turned into boys if they studied the same subjects. She felt that geometry would be particularly useful to girls in helping them to form clear ideas and to set their thoughts in order, but she also felt that the mere name of geometry might have been the death of the college; so she walked delicately, and under the name of “physical geography” she was able to do a good deal. This was thought an eminently safe feminine subject, as few boys learnt any geography at all.