LIFE AND LETTERS OF HANNAH E. PIPE " When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever. Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour, Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod ; But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod, Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. Love led them on ; and Faith, who knew them best Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams And azure wings, that up they flew so drest, And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes Before the Judge ; who thenceforth bid thee rest, And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams." JOHN MILTON. LIFE AND LETTERS OF HANNAH E. PIPE BY ANNA M. STODDART AUTHOR OF 'THE LIFE OF ISABELLA BIRD' (MRS BISHOP) ' JOHN STUART BLACKIE : A BIOGRAPHY,' ETC. WITH AN APPRECIATION BY LADY HUGGINS WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1908 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PEE FACE. So many of Miss Pipe's friends, teachers, and old pupils have contributed to this attempt to reconstruct the fabric of her life before it crumbles into oblivion, that I can only express my deep obligation to them all, without singling from the roll of their names for special acknowledgment more than those of Miss Pope, Lady Huggins, Miss Swindells, and Mrs Barber. It is for them, for her old pupils and for their children, that the book has been written, and from the larger public I would venture to ask indulgence for its shortcomings, on the ground that it is primarily intended for those who knew and loved her, and therefore contains details and reiterations which they will pardon, and it may be, even value. Miss Pipe was my friend for forty years, and it is to this fact that I owe the request of her executors that I should undertake the editing of her Life and Letters. The task has been lightened by their sympathy, VI PREFACE. as well as by the generous encouragement of her valued friend, Lady Huggins, whose " Apprecia- tion" ranks, it seems to me, with the best essays on "Friendship." It needs no apology. To all who have lent me photographs I owe my thanks, and I wish to record all my debt to the interest and helpful guidance afforded me by my old and valued friends, Mr Black wood and Mr George Blackwood. ANNA M. STODDART. 22nd August 1908. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD (ciTCtt 1370: 1578-1847) ..... 1 II. HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING (1847-1858) 34 III. LALEHAM (l858-186l) . . . .72 IV. YEARS OP INCREASE (1862-1865) . . .103 V. RETURN TO WORK (1866-1867) . . .139 VI. LOSS AND GAIN (1868-1873) . . . 182 VII. THE ORPHANAGE (1874-1877) . . . 217 VIII. HAPPY HOLIDAYS (l878-188l) . . . 253 IX. THINGS LOVELY AND OF GOOD REPORT (1882-1885) . 287 X. FAILING HEALTH (1885-1 890) . . . 319 XI. LIMPSFIELD (1890-1906) . . . .355 AN APPRECIATION . . . . .417 INDEX 437 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. H. E. PIPE .... MRS PIPE .... DR HODGSON AND HOUSE IN WRIGHT STREET LALEHAM . DR GOTTFRIED KINKEL . MISS PIPE MISS PIPE .... LALEHAM POND SIR WILLIAM HtJGGINS, K.C.B., O.M., P.R.S. LADY HUGGINS, HON. MEMBER R.A.8. LAKE AND ISLAND, VELDE8 MISS PIPE FEEDING HER PIGEONS Frontispiece To face p. 24 .. 38 ii 84 it 90 .. 120 it 186 ii 234 ii 316 ii 322 ii 342 I. 360 Life and Letters of Hannah E. Pipe. CHAPTEE I. PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. (Circa 1370: 1578-1847.) FROISSART tells us that a Sir James Pipe, or de Pype, was present at the taking possession of Evreux by Lord Philippe de Navarre, and that he became associated with Sir Hugh Calvarley in the governorship of Melun-sur-Marne, and helped to repel the Duke of Normandy, who had sur- rounded the town and besieged it night and day with the primitive artillery of that time. On their return from the French wars, the de Pypes held lands in Derbyshire, Shropshire, and Stafford- shire. Their name and arms point to descent from a royal herald. The subject of this biography, Hannah Pipe, believed in her descent from the Staffordshire 2 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. branch of the de Pypes. She wrote from Bake- well in 1899: "The vicar acknowledges that I have a claim on him in virtue of my ancestors, whose arms are sculptured on the tower of his church high up amongst its battlements, and all over Haddon Hall. They were a Staffordshire family, and their name is well known as attached to places and persons round Lichfield, but, in the days of Henry VI., a lady of that ilk married Sir William Vernon of Haddon Hall, and brought estates to which she was heiress into the Vernon family, whence their association in name and heraldically in the dining-room and various other parts of the house. From that union descended the Lady Dorothy Vernon, of romantic memory, whose steps and walk are still pointed out to all visitors." The de Pype arms may be seen at Haddon Hall over the entrance tower, hi the fourth quarter of the shield ; in the bay window of the drawing- room, which looks on the terrace; in the third quarter of a large shield surmounting a door near the mounting-block ; in a shield on the north side of the dining-room, and in three other shields which decorate the same room. The heiress who married Sir William Vernon was Margaret, daughter of Sir Robert de Pype. She and her husband were buried in Tong Church, Shropshire, and there the de Pype arms may again be found, a shield azure crucily and two pipes or. The crest was a camel's head bridled and ducally gorged sable. 1768-1835.] MR JOHN PIPE. 3 These arms were used by Sir Richard de Pype, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1578, and who was descended from the Derbyshire branch. Of the later generations we have scanty record. Some of them maintained a portion of their lands and honours ; others became a remnant, so far as their number is concerned, amalgamated with the edu- cated middle class. But this remnant did not lose the distinction of feature and mind which was its heritage by descent. About the end of the eighteenth century there was a Mr John Pipe, a notable Wesleyan, an earnest adherent of the saintly reformer, and, like him, an itinerary preacher engaged in reawakening the religious sense amongst rural English populations. He was born in 1768, and became a minister, or rather a " travelling preacher," in 1790, living and work- ing till 1835, when, as his obituary notice puts it, " he peacefully entered into rest," on July 21. He was the author of 'Dialogues on Sanctifica- tion/ much valued in his time, and translated into French. He kept a closely written diary in five books at the time of his death, but of these only a fragment survives, and twenty-three pages which begin a sixth book, and owe their preserva- tion rather to the blank than to the written pages, for those are full of notes of lectures attended by his granddaughter, Hannah, long afterwards. An extract from his record of July 15, 1802, may be quoted, not merely for its own sake, but also to illustrate the earnest atmosphere in which his 4 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. two sons were brought up and the inheritance of faith and spiritual reverence which fell due to Hannah Elizabeth Pipe, and was put by her to such far - reaching profit. He was preaching on that day at High Town : " A woman who sat under the pulpit while I was preaching last at Little Town was taken ill last Monday, and died in about an hour. My text was ' The end of all things is at hand/ and she was so blest under the sermon and afterwards as to be unable to sleep from the fulness of her joy. This led me to call upon them to prepare to meet the Lord. I have lately been struggling after God, and He has this day answered me by His powerful influence on my mind. He appeared as the altogether lovely. There is nothing in all His works or among His creatures that can justly be compared to Him. His glorious perfections infinitely exceed them all. My soul greatly longs for the living God. Him to know and love and serve, is life without end and pleasure evermore. O that my soul may be filled every moment with His perfect love." At the end of 1802 he wrote : " Thus the stream of time rolls on, and we are constantly borne for- ward by it to the ocean of eternity. May my preparation for it bear some proportion to the swiftness of the stream and the capacity of the ocean. If I look for it to my gracious God, He will seal me by His spirit and fully establish me in His ways. I look not at things eternal unbelieving, but with confidence and assurance. I do not 1803.] WESLEYAN CONFERENCE. 5 dread the swiftly passing away of days and years. Why should I? My Saviour reigns above and orders all things well for me." He had the saving grace of humour, and tells how an aged friend, who had walked with God for sixty years, had confided to him that "she had found the devil an arrant rascal, but that now he had given her up as a lost case ! " Of more general interest is his entry concerning the spring Conference of 1803 : " Mr J. Boberts gave a particular account of a design on the part of Government to compel the travelling preachers to take up arms and become soldiers. This was a sudden and unexpected affair, and it was discovered by him and a few respectable gentlemen, who went to hear the parliamentary debates. To their surprise they heard the Secre- tary of State announce his intention to introduce a Bill to the purpose. Nothing could have been more gratifying to the guardians of the public liberties. There was a general vociferation in the House, 'Ay, they'll pray for you ; make them fight for you ! make them fight for you ! ' Mr Boberts and his friends hearing what was going forward, retired immediately to consult what was to be done to counteract this persecuting spirit. The next day they waited on the Secretary and explained to him, from a document lately printed, the difference between the local preachers and those preachers who were absolutely devoted to the work, and had the charge of those societies 6 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. who had placed themselves under their pastoral care. This had the desired effect, and the vile Bill was thrown aside. Blessed be God who has not suffered those who hate us triumphantly to ride over us." An entry of the same year gives some details of his work during two years : "I have been assisted to continue in the Lord's work two years more. We visited nineteen places in Bristol circuit, though only five chapels. We had six local preachers, and had help from others in the Dewsbury circuit. I preached 711 times. The Lord gave me many seals to my ministry, and though there was not that enlargement of the work we desired, yet the Lord blessed and en- couraged us." His wife, Hannah Pipe, dreamt about that time that Mr Pipe would be appointed to the Man- chester circuit, and after preaching twice during the Conference of 1803, he was, to his great astonishment, requested to labour there. In Manchester, therefore, his second son, William, was born, and in Manchester Mr John Pipe died. His sons were men of deep religious conviction like himself, but unfortunately they also inherited his constitutional delicacy. They were fond of books : and some brief notes by William Pipe, made in the early 'Thirties of last century, indicate a wide range of reading : ' Lord Byron's Life,' Burton's ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' ' Homer,' ' Cardinal Wolsey's Life,' Babbage's ' Reflections 1830.] MR AND MBS WILLIAM PIPE. 7 on the Decline of Science in England/ all read within the space of three months in 1832. His brother John was by this time a Wesleyan min- ister as his father had been, and a man not only of singular spiritual endowment, but in his own way a poet and hymn - writer. He was especially the poet - laureate of his family, and in July 1830 had commemorated William's mar- riage to Susanna Spencer, the sister of his friend and partner, John Spencer " May the Lord who joined your hearts Bless you when you join your hands ; May He, while He grace imparts, Rivet firmer friendship's bands. May your mutual love increase, May your piety abound, Till your happy lives increase With eternal glory crowned." So he wrote in serious mood, and then with sprightlier rhythm " If William at last has gained his Susanna, Let all friends unite to sing an hosanna ! If Susanna has found in her William a prize, Let loud hallelujahs ascend to the skies. Let all friends unite to implore from above The blessing Divine on their mutual love." Mr William Pipe took his bride to No. 8 Market Street, and here on Advent Sunday, November 27, 1831, their only child was born. She was christ- ened Hannah Elizabeth after her two grand- mothers. One of these, the widowed Mrs John Pipe, knitted soft socks for her, and they were sent with some stanzas by the family laureate, 8 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. tender and pious stanzas, if not welling from the source of Parnassus : " Welcome lovely, charming maid, Candidate for endless life, Take thy place in earth's parade Midst its complicated strife j Troubles mortals here attend As the active sparks ascend. May the fountain of all grace Bless her with His mercy mild, Crown her with His heavenly peace As His own adopted child ; Father, Son, and Spirit be Hers and ours eternally." Next year, on November 27, Mr William Pipe wrote in his diary : " H. E. P., twelve months old, just learned to say ' ta-ta/ and to be bewitching." It was towards the end of this year that he and his brother-in-law, Mr John Spencer, entered into partnership as manufacturers. Mr Brazil who is happily still living, although in far Omaha writes : " They were fancy manufacturers, that is, they wove goods with patterns on them, some of the patterns being in colours and the ground white. But Mr Pipe had as a side issue a cutlery shop in Market Street under the present Exchange. I knew Mr Spencer, and Mr Pipe and my father were friends. Mr Spencer was a very handsome man, light-haired and of charming manners. His sister, Mrs William Pipe, was a beautiful woman, also light-haired and with clear pink and white complexion." It was from her mother that the little Hannah 1832.] MANCHESTER. 9 derived her lovely colouring, her hair of soft, golden bronze, and her dainty manners. But from her father she inherited depth of thought, great seriousness, a sense of the importance of all things that concern right living, and a certain lofty idealism that was satisfied with only the highest standards, whether of secular or spiritual conduct. It was over the shop in Market Street that Hannah first lived, and on December 19, 1832, first put her little feet to the task of learning to walk, and achieved the whole length of the parlour floor, to her father's delight. There, too, her first impres- sions of the outer world were formed, not very cheerful ones, for the Manchester atmosphere was sombre and Market Street was muddy as at the present time of writing. The little child used to flatten her nose against the window-pane and wonder what it felt like to be down there in the mud, and she remembered the unlovely spectacle all her life. Fortunately she did not stay there long enough to suffer from it. Up to the early 'Thirties Manchester business men lived in the city, over or near their offices and shops. But about that time there began a gradual exodus to the suburbs. Mr William Pipe let his house and shop in Market Street and mi- grated to the new and pleasant quarter of Green- heys, of which Mr Darbishire has most kindly given me the following account: "About 1834 Burlington Street was a country road, stopped near its west end by a wooden swing-gate which 10 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. restricted the Greenheys boundary. From this gate on into Greenheys Lane the road was a cart- way with ruts. Greenheys was the name given to a wide field-tract, which at that time extended from Tuer Street to Boundary Street, between Chorlton-upon-Medlock and Hulme. There was a wooden bridge from the end of Tuer Street into an oldish street called Chatham Street, on either side of which were fairly fine residential houses, in one of which lived two old ladies, who kept fallow-deer in their large garden ; and I can remember as a child feeding these fallow-deer. Boundary Brook, to the south-west of Greenheys Field, ran through the field as a black, dirty, dyed stream, and was called the Black Brook. It passed where now stands Trinity Church, and thence in a southerly direction past the bottom of Burlington Street, through farm-lands and fields to an ancient roadway called Moss Lane. Opposite the west end and across the brook stood a house called Green- heys Hall ; this was occupied by a Mr de Quincey, after whose death Mrs de Quincey, his widow, lived here with young Thomas de Quincey, her son. When she died Mr James Darbishire, a wine merchant in Manchester, bought the HalL He was an old English Presbyterian or Unitarian, and attended Cross Street Chapel, where, in 1828, Mr Robberds, the pastor, was assisted by the Rev. William Gaskell, who survived him, and continued to be pastor till 1878. Mr Gaskell lived in the neighbouring township of Chorlton-upon-Medlock, 1836.] GREENHEYS. 11 and it was here that Mrs Gaskell derived her intimate acquaintance with the fine open country south of Greenheys, with its farmhouses and well- cultivated land afterwards covered with streets of houses which she has made the scene of her celebrated novel, ' Mary Barton,' a novel written to assert, with all her fine sympathy and tact, the needs and calls of the cotton operatives. Like other suburbs of Manchester, especially on the southerly side, there was considerable land specula- tion in Greenheys for the purpose of what would afterwards have been called ' villa-building,' especi- ally along a good street called Embden Street, which separated Hulme on the west from the Black Brook on the east. In 1835 and '36, we, who lived in Embden Street, used to gallop our ponies to the nearer side of the river Medlock, but the making of a great street from All Saints' Church south- wards, called Stratford Road, checked this rambling. " When Mr and Mrs James Darbishire died, the family broke up their lands for cottage -building. But before this the chief building took place along Greenheys Lane. This was then a retired district, and was used by a speculator for building hand- some villas, which became the homes of a colony of German merchants. These are now swept away, and replaced by the streets of small houses characteristic of the district." In the last years of George IV. 's reign, some streets were ready for occupation in the more easterly part of Greenheys, near to the ground 12 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. on which Owen's College was afterwards built. Amongst, them was Wright Street, whose houses followed an architectural fashion of the day, being built of red brick, on a substantial plan, and decorated externally by open ironwork pilasters, porch, verandah, and balconies. Most of them have been taken down and replaced by larger houses or by open spaces, but four of the original buildings still stand, and serve to visualise for us the home of Hannah Pipe's childhood, girlhood, and first educational work. She must have been about five years old when her father removed to 46 Wright Street, Greenheys. The house was roomy and pleasant, and had some space in front and be- hind for garden-ground. The chief sitting-room was on the ground-floor, and was lighted by a large double window opening on the verandah, beneath which a plot for flowers stretched to the railing. In the same street lived Mr and Mrs Brazil and Mr and Mrs Mayson, friends of the Pipes, and their children became little Hannah's playmates. When she was eight years old her father gave her a large manuscript book in which to write her most interesting experiences. It lies before me now, with its occasional entries in clear though childish writing, their spelling rarely wrong. We learn from it that she was already going to a small school in the neighbourhood ; that she was learning to play the piano, and did not like it ; and that she was even having lessons in Latin from her father's friend, Mr Taylor. 1840.] HANNAH'S DIARY. 13 These last were interrupted by Mr Taylor's fre- quent absences on business, and it seems almost with a sigh that she wrote on April 9, 1840, "I wonder when I shall say another Latin lesson to Mr Taylor." Following this is a happy little record : "I was very much pleased to hear papa say that, though I was eight years old, he never heard me tell an untruth. I love to speak the truth." There is a quaint air of self-congratula- tion in this ; but those who knew her will best understand the absolute veracity of her father's appreciation. During that spring, too, she was learning to work in the garden, and to take that delight in gardens which never failed her. On April 15, 1840, she wrote : " A very fine morning in spring ; walked with papa to Mr Raleigh's and breakfasted there. I was very much pleased with the beautiful large garden and a very pretty little arbour with a table in the middle. I was particularly pleased with the hot-houses ; in one of them grapes are growing. I rode from there to the top of Moss Lane in their gig. Two wild geese on a pond in Mr Raleigh's garden, a field beyond the pond, a number of little lambs and sheep were there. Mr Raleigh showed papa and me a number of birds' nests in his garden." Two days afterwards came the triumphant entry: "Papa said that the front garden should in future be mine." So, in this home, where love and gentleness and 14 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [OH. I. seriousness made the atmosphere, she grew, in the deep places rather than on the surface of life, a happy child, not gay, finding from the beginning joy in all things "lovely and of good report." A great many entries are concerned with Sun- day services and missionary meetings, with hymns learnt, and Bible study. On May 16 she wrote : " I am now going through the Bible, and I have read the whole of Genesis and twenty -seven chapters of Exodus." Amongst her relatives out- side the home she loved best her Uncle Spencer ; he had dogs and horses, in which she delighted, and he was fond of the gentle, serious child. Long after, she spoke of him to me as having had influence on her whole character, from his charm of manner and courtesy to all. The Pipes and Spencers, the Maysons, Taylors, and Brazils were all Wesleyans, and their life had the chapel for its main centre and pivot : the chapel, not the minister, for there was a too fre- quent succession of ministers, while the services, meetings, societies, philanthropies preserved an active continuity. Inside the house in Wright Street, the life was regulated by the forceful motor-power of religion. Mr Pipe himself was one of the Local Preachers, and one of the most valued amongst them, because of his mental cul- ture and refinement. In the later 'Thirties and first 'Forties he was sought after to take special services, and preached the Sunday-school anniver- sary sermon at Delph Hill, near Bolton-le-Moors, 1840.] CHILDISH MOODS. 15 for seven years before his death. He was char- acterised by great reverence for all that belonged to religion, and in this reverence Hannah Pipe was brought up. Along with this hallowed sense of the great sphere in which the Eternal Spirit moved, there grew in her an acute sensitiveness to her own shortcomings. It often seemed to her that, beside the radiance of the spiritual world which was so near her, her own little life was black by reason of her defects and impulses. She confided her introspective penitence to her diary, and we read sometimes of moods akin to despair. On May 15, 1840, she wrote : " Miss Sowden was very much grieved because I had practised so little. I am sadly too fond of play." And in April 1843 there is a striking passage : " Could not say my Latin perfectly, wasted my time until 12 o'clock, then sat down to my drawing, did a few strokes, then idled the time. Then sat with as much bad temper as would allow me to sit, afterwards put away my drawing in as bad a temper. Then went upstairs and swung my bag, as mamma and Miss Taylor are always telling me not to do, and struck it in my eye. Thus I spend my days, to the un- happiness of myself and the annoyance of every- body else. Is this what I was made for? Who will judge about that? Who do I care for, if I have enough to eat and wear ? " And then, in an access of remorse, she added, " That's a lie ! " This temper, which sprang from fastidiousness and perhaps a little from the tactlessness of her 16 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. i. teacher, was apt to recur, and gave her the greatest concern. From quite early years a cer- tain haughtiness of mood would descend upon her, which we can trace to the ferment of a growing mind and complex character, to that strange awakening of qualities, sometimes only imitative, but often very real, mental and ethical, which the very young cannot possibly master and weld into harmony. In Hannah Pipe, at eleven years of age, fostered by her environment of older and very serious people, inheriting the strong intellectuality of her father, the charm and sensitiveness of the Spencers, there was an early struggle between the ideal of her aim and the shortcoming of her grasp, and this struggle lasted to her old age, often to the astonishment of her friends, who found no fault in her. The year 1841 was full of sorrow for Mrs Pipe and her little daughter. Mr Pipe died on June 18. He had been ailing for more than a year, and was obliged to spend a good deal of time away from home. This illness was the more distressing, because his partner, Mr Spencer, had fallen into a slow decline, and for many months was unable to attend to their business, which, owing to these and other causes, was not in a prosperous state. Manchester was in the midst of the Corn Law agitation ; the city and its population increased yearly ; railways were begun, that between Manchester and Leeds was just opened, that to Birmingham was just finished. Chartist riots and 1841.] MR PIPE'S DEATH. 17 strikes had been depressing manufacture for some years, but none the less an extraordinary activity prevailed. New sects, new churches, philanthropic institutions, musical festivals, concerts for the working people, were some of its signs. The introduction of power-looms occasioned an acute crisis amongst manufacturers. Those who were unable to replace the old hand -looms, lost the markets which railways were multiplying. Mr Pipe and his partner lacked capital, and could not take the tide at its turn, so they were forced by its pressure into the background. This and his brother-in-law's illness distressed Mr Pipe and increased his constitutional delicacy. He was in Cornwall during part of the winter of 1840-41, and went to New Brighton in April of the latter year, Mrs Pipe with him. On the 14th Hannah joined her parents. They returned in May ; but there was no change in Mr Pipe's condition, and gradually he declined to the end. Mr Spencer was by this time a confirmed in- valid, and died four months later on October 23, 1841, and early in the following year his mother passed away, stricken by the loss of her son. When the partnership affairs were settled, it was found that a sum of only 1500 remained for Mr Pipe's widow and child. They had the house in Wright Street comfort- ably furnished, but the income to be derived from their little capital was inadequate to keeping it up. Mrs Pipe was a woman of great resource and B 18 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. energy. She announced her intention of opening a shop. Part of Mr Pipe's property had consisted of the cutlery shop at 8 Market Street, and several of his friends bought it in, added toys, jewellery, and fancy work to its stock, and installed Mrs Pipe as its tenant. It was a long way from Wright Street, but she walked in every morning and returned on foot every evening when the day's labours were over. Her great desire was to keep up the home in Wright Street for her child, who loved it. An excellent servant, Anne, had come to them some years before Mr Pipe died. She could be trusted to take Hannah to school and bring her back in the afternoon. As the distance was great, and there was only an hour's interval between morning and afternoon lessons, Anne carried a little basket containing the mid-day dinner for her young mistress, and returned to her duties when both were safely deposited. The school was at that time the best in Man- chester, except the Grammar -School, which was solely for boys. Its master was Mr Charles Cumber, a member of the Society of Friends. It is now admitted on all hands that the education of girls was greatly stimulated by that Society. The Friends were amongst the very first to recognise the right of women to mental cultiva- tion, and their schools were the best in England for both girls and boys. Mr Cumber was from Guernsey, and had some French blood in his 1843.] MR CUMBER'S SCHOOL. 19 veins. He had been invited by the Society of Friends in Manchester to come over and open a school for their children. It was held in a build- ing near the Friends' Meeting House, and close to the Town Hall in Princess Street. There were three schoolrooms two of them large, and separ- ated by a platform, on which Mr Cumber sat at his desk and supervised both. One was for girls, the other for boys. The third room was separate from these, but had a glass window opening on the platform, so that the master could see what passed inside. This was more particularly his own class-room. The girls had a lady superintendent : and in Hannah Pipe's time this was a Miss Fessant a very able woman, who taught grammar, history, geography, arithmetic, and writing, and made her lessons very interesting. Mrs King, who was at school with Hannah, tells me that there were about thirty girl pupils in their time, and that, although it was an elementary school, the train- ing was excellent. She remembers her early schoolfellow well ; for as she had to come all the way from Sale, they generally spent the dinner- hour and opened their baskets together. She used to admire the daintiness of Hannah Pipe's dinner and its accessories the snow-white napkin, the shining silver, and writes of the harmony between her person and such details : " She does not stand out in my memory as at all conspic- uously clever, but as a refined and dignified girl, 20 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. probably about twelve years old ; but I think there was something perhaps it might be called a sense of superiority that kept her from close intimacy. Her personality is clear and distinct to me as possible, and the remembrance of her a very pleasant one, her slender, graceful figure, delicate colouring, and shining hair." It is cheering to learn that she was not always a model girl, and that she once ran round the schoolroom under Mr Cumber's nose, but so lightly that he did not hear her. Another of her old schoolfellows is also still in active and benevolent life in Manchester Mr Broadfield, who tells me that Mr Cumber con- ducted the higher classes himself in the third room, and that these included history, composition, physical science, and natural philosophy. The latter subject he taught by illustration : he had a solar microscope which threw pictures on a screen when the sun shone, and this he used for drops of water and flower-petals and other minute objects which helped his lessons on chemistry, electricity, and botany. The subject of steam- power was naturally of immediate interest, and he had a little model engine moved by steam to show its use in his lessons on pneumatics. Mr Cumber's handling of all subjects in the cur- riculum was far in advance of his time, and was of real educative as well as instructive influence. Thus in teaching composition he insisted upon the use of words appropriate to their purpose in the 1843.] KINSLEY. 2 1 sentence : the writer had to make sure of the exact meaning and value of the words employed. He would read to his pupils some passage into which he had introduced three so-called synonyms, and would ask them to write short essays on any subject which pleased them, in which the three had to be presented each in its exact variation of meaning. It was a fashion of the pupils to relate some incident of school-life in these com- positions, and Hannah Pipe was an adept in somewhat satirical anecdotes which delicately pil- loried her companions, but she cheerfully sub- mitted to be pilloried in her turn. From Mr Cumber she received the first deliberate guidance in the use of language always with her a matter of great importance both for veracious expression by herself and for the training of her girls. Her early diary indicates the unconscious influence of home in her choice of words. Mr Broadfield remembers her as a serious, studious girl, about fifteen years of age, excelling in composition. Summer holidays began in June, and Mrs Pipe used to send Hannah away in Anne's charge to a farmhouse in Cheshire called Kinsley. They went by canal-boat and coach or cart, and the journey was one of the holiday incidents most looked forward to, for the canal banks were gay with flowers. At the farm Hannah could run wild, feed the chickens and pigeons, ride on the plough -horses, gather flowers in the meadows. To 22 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. her old age she cherished memories of those happy days. At home she gardened in spring and summer, and had a window-case fall of flowering-plants, of which lists were carefully kept in her diary. She learnt to sew and knit and embroider, and over- came her dislike of music so far as to practise very carefully, often getting up very early to secure an hour's practice before breakfast. The daily progress through her Bible is recorded from time to time, and was begun again when the first read- ing was completed ; and there is mention of books read in the evenings with her mother, amongst them, volume after volume of Rollin's ' History/ Her chief friend and companion was Mary Brazil, with whom she spent many hours, and whom she dearly loved. She had a young cousin, Margaret Ewer, at New Brighton, whom she sometimes vis- ited, and who writes : " I remember her, a thin slip of a girl, with bright hair low down on her neck behind. She was my mother's favourite niece and often with her. I was younger than Annie, as she was called at home, but I remember her sit- ting with me on a step of the staircase near the open door of our house, and showing me how to make a blue-and-white bead bracelet like one she wore. She used to superintend my piano practice too. My uncle died when I was an infant." The June holiday of 1844 was signalised by a visit to Mr and Mrs Brailsford at Wath, her mother for once going with her. The diary grows enthus- 1844.] GIRLHOOD. 23 iastic over this visit its rides on Sam, a beautiful grey pony ; her fall off his back the first time she ventured on, and her determined remounting im- mediately after, so that by the next day she rode to Wharncliffe without mishap. " I rode on Sam " becomes a frequent entry ; and once, proudly, " I rode to Swinton, two miles, by myself on Sam, and rode back on him in company with J. in the cart." But Mrs Pipe could spare only one week, and Hannah returned to stay a night with Mary Brazil, whose home seems to have been in the throes of a spring cleaning, for " Mr Brazil put the sofa upon four chairs and the bed on that between the bed- stead and the bed and two mattresses on the bed- stead, and on that we slept ; we had not a wink of sleep all night, but we made no noise, neither did we quarrel, and at four o'clock in the morning we took a walk to our house and commenced weeding the front garden, and by talking very loudly we awoke all the others." Such incidents may be trivial, but in view of the strenuous life which began only five years later, it is well to realise that her childhood had many re- laxations, that her character had the impulses and limitations of her years, and that it contained a mul- titude of germs, some already shooting upwards, others hidden beneath the surface, but all in safe keeping, ready in good time for growth in form and beauty, and all to be used for the Master's service. As she grew up into girlhood she became more and more conscious of the strain on her mother's 24 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. health involved by the business in Market Street. Mrs Pipe was still a beautiful woman. Mr Brazil says : " Miss Pipe seemed too old for her years. She was always distinctly older than her mother. The latter had offers of marriage up to 1856, some of them very flattering indeed, both socially and pecuniarily. All these she steadily declined." A time came when the pretty dresses, grey and lavender, which she used to wear, grew shabby, and she would not buy new ones, but saved every penny to keep her child in comfort and at school, to give her lessons in music and French, and to assure the summer holiday. Hannah noticed the change and grieved over it. She liked to see her mother wearing pretty dresses and caps of real lace. She began to feel that she was in some measure responsible for the expense which so deprived the one whom she loved best, and substituted for her becoming gowns dull linsey-woolseys which wore longer and looked worse. She racked her brain in silence for some expedient to eke out their narrow income, and then she began to work at home, where no one could see her, at dainty embroideries and children's wearing apparel, and carried her little parcels to a shop where such things were sold, making a few shillings monthly in this manner. It was the beginning of new inducements, new resolves, and of an eager determination to equip her- self for work, for any feminine employment which would bring in money enough to keep them both and arrest the drudgery which had begun to sap MRS PIPE. 1845.] INCIDENTS OF GIBLHOOD. 25 her mother's health and cheerfulness. She worked so beautifully that for a time she thought of mil- linery as a possible undertaking, hoping to add pretty caps and bonnets to the stock in Mrs Pipe's shop, to join her there, and to take orders from the ladies who were customers. But in the mean- time she was too young, and her schooling went on, supplemented by work at home. We have no records of the years that followed, except such as we can extract from her diary from 1845 to 1848, but its pages become crowded with quotations and reflections, and no longer narrate the daily routine, so that they are more a guide to her mental pre- occupations than to the circumstances of her life. It was her habit to rise very early to practise two hours before breakfast and to get in as much reading of history as was possible till it was time to start for school. Miss Sowden still came to give her music lessons after school hours. About the end of 1844 she was far from well and was kept at home, but the invalid days were fully occupied, and we are told of much practice and study, and on one day of twelve hymns learnt. Sir Walter Scott's novels were added to her more serious reading : ' Kenilworth ' and ' Anne of Geierstein ' were devoured in four days, but as these were holidays, Hollin's weighty tomes were set aside to make room for them. It is curious to read that she still played with dolls, had a dolls' house, and dressed its occupants. Her biggest and best doll was called " Mary," after her special friend. The chill of December continued 26 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. throughout January, and she was at home all that month, because "it was piercingly cold," but her music and reading were kept up steadily. By the middle of February she was better, but prone to take sudden chills. Some confidential lines, written cryptically in her diary of April 1845, prove to be outbursts of disappointment because a favourite aunt did not come to the chapel meetings. In the summer of that year the serious reading was D'Aubigne's Reformation. The entries for the whole year indicate a cheerful, busy life at school and at home, many little social occasions, and especially her birthday festivities, which even at the end of her fourteenth year had become important, occasional revelations of cap -making and other needlework, and, unhappily, the fre- quent illness of Mrs Pipe. Drawing-lessons and dancing-lessons began in the autumn. The entry for November 27 may be quoted, for that day in every year grew to be memorable to all her friends : "Another year has flown, and I am now four- teen ! In the morning Miss Sowden came. Mrs Brazil, Henry, Clarence, and Mary came to dinner. My cousins, Hannah, Maria, and Emma Pipe, came too, and Mrs Hunter came for tea. In the after- noon we played at draughts, spillekins, cup-and- ball, and other games. I beat Emma, Mary, and Henry at draughts. After tea we had some games at bagatelle. Clarence and I got the most : he got 28 once and I got 28 twice. Mary stayed all night. 1846.] BIRTHDAY PRESENTS. 27 My Aunt Maria sent me a Prudence-cap with long and excellent letter. Mamma gave me two hand- some books called ' The Little English Flora ' and a ' Manual of Philosophy.' Anne gave me a very pretty morning frock of lilac and white print. Henry Brazil gave me some ivory tablets and a beautiful little purse. Clarence gave me a pen- holder, and Mary gave me a sachet, lavender and silver. I enjoyed the day exceedingly." The most interesting entry in January 1846 is her attendance at the Evangelical Alliance Meet- ing at Manchester, when Mr Fletcher presided ; and amongst the speakers were the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, the Rev. J. Angell James, the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, and Dr Bunting. From the speech of one of these she gleaned the motto : " In things necessary, Unity ; in things indifferent, Liberty ; in all things, Charity." The ' Pictorial History of England ' was the standard work for this year's reading. Her attendance at Mr Cumber's school had become very broken, chiefly by frequent absences to York, Scarborough, and Bath, but also perhaps because only the lectures were by this time of any use to her. In August she went to Miss Walker's school at Frodsham, near Chester, where she had lessons in French, drawing, music, and composition, but does not seem to have remained there more than a year, and no details of the time survive. The eighth and last volume of the ' Pictorial History ' was finished on November 16, 1847, and was 28 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. i. succeeded by Fletcher's 'Works and Life,' and Bigland's ' Letters on English History.' But the diary for this year is very scanty in detail, and indeed is almost neglected. On its last day a solemn reflection is entered : " Another portion of my existence is nearly emptied into eternity, and each moment has registered itself. Each one misspent or unemployed will add to my future misery, or diminish the bliss of Heaven." She was now sixteen years old, and her mind seems to have somewhat suddenly matured into greater concentration and seriousness. We have only one month's records left, but these are in a new form, less childish, better written, and more interesting. The writing is notably improved, and has developed into great delicacy and legibility, so that it can be read like printed matter. Some of the last entries are characteristic of this growth, mental and practical, and may be quoted as they occur, with deletion of the prosier pages. On February 17, 1848, she wrote : " My dear Diary, I have to apologise for my great neglect of you latterly. But I intend to compensate for it by an assiduous cultivation of your friendship for the future. I have told you of my resolution in this respect, principally because recent events have in- formed me that I am deficient in firmness, and I hope that on reference to this open avowal of my intentions concerning you, I may be stimulated to perseverance. I spent last evening at Mr Lam- bert's, in company with Mr Bally, the famous 1848.] MR BALLY. 29 phrenologist. He remarked several defects in my cerebral development which it behoves me to remedy as far as in me lies : ' Want of eventu- ality, or forgetfulness of events; other forgetful- ness ; inattention to practical details ; deficient business talents.' Now these may be improved by informing you of all the ideas or events which strike me. It may also serve the purpose of rendering my expression more copious. ... In the afternoon of yesterday I went to see Catherine Cavannah's daughter. She is dying of consump- tion. Her wearied limbs are stretched on a scanty bed, without stocks or anything to keep it from the bare floor. It cannot be kept clean on account of her own and her mother's infirmities. Two miserable pieces of furniture that once were chairs, a shelf of broken pots and rubbish, and one little tray, are the amount of her earthly posses- sions. Catherine herself is so ill that the exertion of sweeping the three or four square yards of her room is almost too much for her. The town allows her 2s. Of this, Is. 6d. a week is paid for rent ! and 6d. for subsistence ! They live in an unhealthy and densely-populated part of the city. " Mr Bally says that my ruling principle is benevolence ; in veneration I am very deficient, and what I have is acquired by education. He says I used to have a propensity to ' turn de back and shake de shoulders a little/ but that my mamma ' taught me de obedience.' And much else he said ; amongst other things, in common 30 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. with most ladies, I am deficient in hope. I am also found wanting in calculation, individuality, and eventuality. The two latter I am to be very diligent in cultivating. In order thereto, I have passed four resolutions viz. : " Never to read a book without acquiring a new idea. " Never to take a walk without acquiring a new idea. " Never to pass a day without acquiring a new idea. " To commit them to your keeping as well as to that of my memory. " I intend to remain, my dear Diary, Yours very faithfully, ANNIE PIPE." In the next letter she repeats a charming inci- dent related by a friend at the tea-table : " Mr Tompkins told us of a Yorkshire metaphor em- ployed at a meeting near f ewsbury by a weaver of that neighbourhood. As nearly as I can remember, ., his words (being interpreted, for he spoke in the Yorkshire dialect) were : ' Now, my lads, I've got a good coat on, and I'll tell ye how I came by't. I used to go to church, and I thought I'd got a decent coat on. But when I came among the Methodists I found out it was all over rags and tatters, so I threw't away, and got another, lads. It was woven in the merits of Christ, dyed in His blood, milled in His grave ; He took it to heaven to put th' nap on, and then hung it out in the Gospel. Blessed 1848.] BOOKS. 31 be God, I grabt it, and it fits me as well as if I'd been measured for it. I've worn it forty years, and it's a better coat than when I began on't ! There's plenty o' coats left in the Gospel, lads; ye've nought to do but ask and it shall be given to ye.' ' In 1848 Lord Lansdowne's Bill, proposing diplo- matic relations between the Courts of Rome and England, was rousing a storm of opposition amongst evangelical Protestants in England, and this is frequently alluded to in the diary. February I9th. "Mary Brazil is here reading ' Coelebs,' to my extreme satisfaction, refraining from the tempting row of novels in the sitting- room bookcase." Other books were, Dr Johnson's * Lives ' and a ' Breviary of Phrenology,' and the former doubtless accounts for a certain majesty of style in the contemporary entries. Style constantly occupied her thoughts. She writes on the same date : " I think it is very difficult to attain a good style in writing. Miss Graham says that mathe- matics and a knowledge of Latin are important adjuncts. Good common-sense and a refined mind are certainly of primary importance." Next day she was occupied with another of Miss Graham's suggestions : "I was much struck this afternoon with a beautiful thought of Miss Graham's, the delight she felt in using the words ' Our Father ' in prayer, and in praying to God as the common Father of a large family, herself a member. Oh ! how lamentably different I have been. I have even sometimes so far clipped the 32 PARENTAGE, CHILDHOOD, AND GIRLHOOD. [CH. I. beautiful prayer of Jesus as to say, 'My Father.' Be it far from me ever to do so again. Oh ! that I had more of the charity which seeketh not her own in spiritual things to the exclusion of others. Miss Graham said that one of her most exquisite pleas- ures was the exercise of ' praising, confessing, and praying for herself as one of this large family, and in feeling their joys and sorrows as her own.' " This seed fell on good soil, germinated and grew to strength and fruit -bearing all her life. Who that had the inexpressible privilege of sharing her morning worship can forget those petitions, glowing with love to the Heavenly Father, fraught with rev- elation of that marvellous relationship to us all ? Young as she was, her meditations now were often on such subjects as belong to mature years. Thus on February 21 she wrote : "I often think that if we had certain knowledge that no more people would be born, and that the generation now alive was to be the last, we should set about preparing for that state into which a few years would launch us, with much more earnestness than we do at present. And yet there would be no more occasion. The earth may echo to the sound of footsteps a hundred years to come, but they will not be ours. The stillness of our sleep will not be interrupted by the turmoil of another race of beings. There is a hankering after something yet to come in the human breast, placed there for the best of purposes, but how perverted ! We only eat one meal that we may be sustained until another comes. We toil 1848.] INTELLECTUAL GROWTH. 33 one day that we may spend the next in ease. One year is spent to make another year happy. One generation is wasted in heaping up wealth for an- other. But how seldom comparatively do we bend all our energies to lay up treasure in Heaven, to work while it is day, that when the night cometh, we may peacefully watch its shadows closing round us in the sure hope of a joyful awakening in the land where no bright future will be needed to shed a radiance o'er some present gloom." ' Cowper's Letters ' and ' Howard's Biography ' were the books now read in the evenings, as well as the ' Memoirs of Port Royal/ which interested her so greatly that she copied long extracts from its pages. This practice of collecting facts, thoughts, maxims of conduct, striking passages in poetry or prose, once begun, became habitual, and furnished her with a store of "counsels of perfection" for lifelong use. Her intellectual or spiritual growth was so rapid and so marked by seriousness of aim and principle, that she lacked nourishment and employment for her eager powers. Happily a new influence was at hand for their discipline and directing. 34 [CH. n. CHAPTER II. HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. (1847-1858.) IN 1847 Dr William B. Hodgson became Principal of Chorlton High School. A year earlier he had received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Glas- gow University. For eight years he had been Secretary to the Mechanics' Institute in Liverpool, where he had induced the committee to add a Girls' School to their other departments, and to purchase a separate building for its use ; and he started a class for female teachers, as well as a Mental Improvement Society, designed for both men and women. He was only thirty-one years old when he left Liverpool for Chorlton, but had proved himself already to be a consummate director, inspector, and teacher. His interest in the higher education of girls was far in advance of his time, and he may well be regarded as a pioneer in all the development of classes, colleges, and high schools, which began a quarter of a century later, although he strongly disapproved of much in the funda- 1847.] DB HODGSON. 35 mental organisation of both colleges and high schools for girls. The spirit in which he did his work of supervision is well described by his bio- grapher, the late Professor Meiklejohn of St Andrews University. " His attention to the smallest details is something wonderful. He suggests to one teacher the propriety of showing his pupils how to fold and address letters properly ; explains to another how geography may be made interesting ; invents and prescribes sets of exercises for many of the classes ; shows how difficult lines from Milton's ' Paradise Lost ' may be best ex- plained ; teaches the French master how to teach French ; cuts down the * theory ' of a singing-' master, and induces him to give his class more practice in the art itself; gives valuable lessons in discipline to masters who are pedantic, lifeless, vexatious, irritable, or too woodenly strict ; shows another how to invent and put questions ; gives a lesson in the art of reading ; maps out a Latin sentence ; shows how drill in the accidence may be best conducted ; introduces easy and workable pens ; is equal to the highest and careful of the very lowest element. . . . He spends even his holi- days in studying the profession of teaching and in picking up plans and ideas in other schools. . . . Everywhere strong and hearty humanity, the fullest sympathy with and understanding of all kinds of characters, and a persistent will to make educa- tion all through the school and in every subject an intellectual and not a routine process." 36 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. No wonder the Institute prospered in his time. "When he left it the day pupils numbered 1650 ; the evening classes had 400 pupils ; the High School contained 250 boys ; the Girls' School, 300 girls ; the public lectures, which were given twice a-week, had an average attendance of 1200 persons ; and there were between sixty and seventy teachers on the permanent staff." This was the man who came to Chorlton and took up the duties of Head- master of its Secondary School for Boys. Other careers had been offered to him, but he thought that his true vocation lay in the direction of such a school. Chorlton was close to Greenheys, and the fame of its Principal was soon universal in Manchester and its suburbs. He was there only four years, but those years were of immense benefit both to the boys in his school and to the girls outside it, whom he formed into special classes for mental training. These classes were for analysis, logic, language, and etymology and for composition, based on all of these. Hannah Pipe was one of his pupils for three years, and was the pupil who interested him most and who drew forth his best and most efficient help. His mental vitality stimu- lated hers, and his fine and critical insight divined what she most needed. For some time their inter- course was strictly confined to that of teacher and pupil, but it soon became clear to her that here was amongst all with whom she had come in contact, the most penetrating, patient, wise, and helpful 1847-8.] A COURSE OF STUDY. 37 counsellor, and that she could trust his advice on the pressing subject of her future career. She con- sulted him, therefore, and he at once responded by earnestly dwelling on her exceptional fitness for the profession of teacher, and on the inevitable dis- appointment and mental deterioration which she would suffer from a mere mechanical business. He sketched out for her a course of study, dwelling on the immediate sacrifice necessary for her training. Her interest hitherto had been especially attracted by History, and she was anxious to add to her knowledge of that subject, one in those days so little enlightened by research and so entirely arbi- trary that Dr Hodgson explained to her the differ- ence between acquiring knowledge from books, and preparing the mind to be a means of constant and growing use whatever study she cared in after-life to undertake. His arguments were a revelation to her of what true education can be. Her first impulse was one of indignant discontent with all the schooling she had received, and this was ex- pressed in the words, " Then, I must not teach as I have been taught." Dr Hodgson recommended particularly the sub- jects which would concentrate and discipline her mind, so as to make it penetrating and accurate, grammatical analysis and logic first, and then the larger use and understanding of her own language. She set herself to these with unflagging ardour, and the preoccupation of the years between 1848 and 1851 accounts for the entire neglect of her 38 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [OH. n. diary, to which she had so penitently pledged her fidelity. Not only was she immersed in her new and fascinating studies, but she had literally ac- cepted Dr Hodgson's advice, and with his as- sistance in procuring pupils, had opened a little school at 46 Wright Street, had induced Mrs Pipe to give up her wearing business life, and was launched upon the great work of education, in which her amazing success justified both Dr Hodgson's advice and her ready acquiescence. But at first she hated teaching. The classes for girls at Chorlton were given on Saturday afternoons, so that they did not interfere with her school. Amongst her first pupils were three little boys, who came all the way from Sale to be prepared for the Chorlton High School, at Dr Hodgson's recommendation. Another first pupil was Miss Lucy Smith, who died some years ago, and what she herself related of her school-days at Wright Street is so interest- ing that, although Lady M'Dougall has already quoted some of it in the 'Wesleyan Methodist Magazine,' it is too helpful to our realisation of Miss Pipe's first educational work to be omitted here, in the dearth of fuller detail. " I think," she wrote, " I was the first to present myself at Miss Pipe's house to carry on my lessons after the alphabet stage under her guidance. Older girls soon took up Miss Pipe's attention, and we little ones received our first lessons in reading, writing, arithmetic, and sewing from Miss Pipe. The only 1848.] SCHOOL IN WRIGHT STREET. 39 lessons we juniors received from Miss Pipe at that time were in her Bible - classes, and those who remember her Bible - classes in later times will easily imagine how vividly she pictured to us the beautiful Old Testament stories. The first short text I remember repeating to her was ' Even Christ pleased not Himself (she had been warn- ing us against selfishness). . It was early in the 'Fifties that she removed to a larger house in the neighbourhood and received a few boarders, when I was promoted to some of the classes which she took herself. . . . The few music-lessons she gave me when my music teacher was absent were more thorough than any I ever had, till those many years later from Mr Walter Macfarren. Some delightful summer excursions stand out in my memory. She took us occasionally a short dis- tance out of the smoky atmosphere of Man- chester to study botany. . . . We all gave our- selves up to the enjoyment of the fresh air and the rambles among wild flowers, followed by tea in a clean, pretty cottage. We were all young together, she but very little older than the oldest of us. She was to me the embodi- ment of all that is womanly, graceful, and gracious, and I wept bitter tears when she left Manchester." This leads us beyond our date of 1848, when she began her school in Wright Street. As we have seen, her work did not prevent her from attending Dr Hodgson's classes, and she was 40 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. gaining from them more than mental discipline and aptitude in language. She noted his methods as well as his subjects, the skill with which he drew out what was in his pupils ; his fine art of questioning, very different from the dull question- ing of the manuals of teachers of that day, his power of co-ordinating one subject with another, so that they seemed to be penetrated with a consistence which made them essential to each other. She noted too his generous trust in the good -will and rectitude of his pupils, the large humanity and patience to which Professor Meikle- john alludes, his appreciation of all sincere effort on their part. When his health made it neces- sary for him to give up the school at Chorlton, she wrote to express her deep obligation to him. The letter is dated June 1851, and was written therefore in her twentieth year : DEAE Sm, May I beg you to accept a head which I have drawn for you with mingled pain and pleasure ? It is very painful to me to think that I am offering to you a parting gift, but it is pleasant, nay, necessary, to me to express my thankfulness to you ; thankfulness deeper than that I have felt for any one else except my mother. You have done for me what no one else has ever done, laid a strong hand on the powers of my mind, awakened me to self-consciousness, given me energy and directed its exer- tion, and opened up for me infinite sources of happiness, and, I hope, of usefulness. If the trifling thing I send have any interest, it will arise from recalling to your mind one of the many for whom you have made life and im- mortality more valuable. I am, ever yours most truly, E. PIPE. 1851.] GIRL-FRIENDS. 41 Dr Hodgson's reply came from Dovedale a few later : MY DEAK MADAM, Had not your very kind letter and present reached me just as I was leaving home for this place, I should have replied on the instant. Let me briefly say that one such letter as that which I have received from you would be a most ample recompense for much more than I have had the power of doing. That you should so value the aid I may have had the good fortune to give you in your onward progress, is no small consola- tion to me in leaving what I had hoped would be the scene of much more effort in the same direction. The present itself I shall most carefully preserve, both in remembrance of our intercourse, which has been fully as satisfactory to me as to you, and as a very pleasing evidence that your improvement has been by no means confined to those departments more especially within my range. With my kind regards to you and your mother, I am, ever yours most faithfully, W. B. HODGSON. These letters cemented the foundations of a friendship which lasted till 1880, when Dr Hodgson died. A great friend of those years between 1848 and 1856 was Miss Sarah Needham, afterwards Mrs Palmer. She, Mary Brazil, and Miss Crow- ther were Miss Pipe's chief companions on holiday walks and in mutual visits. Mrs Pipe was always most anxious about her friendships, and would say, "I always think what influence will she have on Annie?" Miss Needham's brother was a devoted Sunday- school teacher, and when Queen Victoria visited 42 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. u. Manchester on October 10, 1851, it was he who proposed and helped to organise the welcome from 82,000 children, which her Majesty recorded in her ' Journal ' as " a most extraordinary and, I suppose, unprecedented sight. All the children sang ' God save the Queen ' extremely well to- gether." Not only did this affect the Queen to tears, but most of the spectators were weeping in sympathy. Miss Pipe was present with some of her girls, and Miss Needham. At that time she was greatly concerned about her Bible-classes, and would speak of them all the tune that she was walking with her friend ; and so spiritual and original were her thoughts that Mrs Palmer remembers going home with a sense of strong uplifting afterwards. Nevertheless there was a strain of doubt and difficulty sometimes ; for the growing intellectuality naturally made a cleavage between the spiritual life discerned as the highest, and the common practice of professing Christians, and her habit of insisting on the higher and disdaining the lower aim gave rise to that distressing and anxious questioning. How often has this absence of the inward and spiritual grace in fussy worshippers startled sincere young minds into doubt ? Miss Barrett tells us : " My father came to Badnor Street Wesleyan Chapel in Man- chester as minister in 1849, and the first Sunday my mother attended the chapel, he asked her afterwards what she thought of the congregation, and whether her attention had been attracted by 1851.] MR BARRETT. 43 any of its members. She said that she had speci- ally noticed only two ladies, who seemed to be mother and daughter ; but these two seemed to stand out from the rest, and she felt much drawn to them. Both had fair and delicate complexions, and Miss Pipe was tall and graceful. My mother described their appearance as one of dignified simplicity, purity, and refinement. My father and mother soon came to know them, and Mrs Pipe asked my father to allow her daughter to join a Bible-class that he held for ladies, as she thought it might help her. She was then in the midst of religious difficulties and struggles such as must often be encountered by a young,- thoughtful, and earnest mind, and it is probable that she needed a wider outlook and a larger conception of truth than had as yet been presented to her. Afterwards she always said that it was through my father she was brought safely out of this time of difficulty, so that she came to walk with firm footing on the upward way ; but, she said, it was not so much his words that helped her as his beautiful life. As she watched that life she felt full of wonder, and she thought, ' The Power that can produce such a life as that is an intense reality.' " From that time, probably about 1851, she never doubted God, although she often wisely doubted men's words about God. Perhaps no purer faith ever glowed in saint or martyr than in Hannah Pipe, for hers was a faith that reached up to the 44 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. presence of God, whence came her aid, and rested there. The day-school prospered, its classes grew too large for Wright Street ; the mothers of her pupils, finding what her personal influence and example did for their girls, became anxious to entrust them to her entirely during the necessary years of schooling, and a sufficient number was offered to make it wise for Mrs Pipe and her daughter to seek a larger house. In 1852 they moved to 27 Acomb Street, close to Wright Street, and also within the suburb of Greenheys. The street still stands, and is near Owen s College. Here began a new chapter in Miss Pipe's life and work. The day - classes were continued, and the house was gradually filled with boarders. It was usual in those days to call such a school a " Seminary for Young Ladies," but her good taste rejected so pretentious an advertisement, and on the door- plate was inscribed, " Mrs and Miss Pipe's School." In this year, 1852, Mr and Mrs Barrett left Manchester, and Miss Pipe lost one of the few friends with whom she could freely and fully converse on the subject of her educational plans and ideals. Miss Barrett says : "I have heard my mother say that in Miss Pipe's ideas of educa- tion she found, for the first time, the realisation of something she had been seeking, found, indeed, a full expression of an ideal after which she had been feeling. My eldest sister, who had been so 1852.] ACOMB STREET. 45 far educated by our mother and father, was now approaching the age at which they thought it would be well for her to go to school, and when they left Manchester for London my sister was sent as a pupil to Mrs and Miss Pipe." When Mrs Barrett called to bid them good-bye, she found Miss Pipe sitting by the fireside in great distress. She had been upset by the incapacity of her assistants to understand her conception of what teaching should be. It was impossible for her mother and herself to teach all the classes, superin- tend the class-rooms, keep accounts, and manage the house, so visiting teachers and a governess had been added to the staff, the best procurable,, but entirely in the dull backwater of unintelligent instruction, not in the fresh current which was feeling its tentative way through stagnation. Her own watchword had been, " I must not teach as I have been taught." Dr Hodgson had opened to her a more excellent way, stimulating, not stultifying ; guiding, not driving ; enriching, not exhausting. It was the dawn of education, but few had hailed the light. In Manchester at that time it was next to impossible to wrest minds petrified in the old methods into apprehension, far less appreciation, of the new. Miss Pipe sat weeping over some crass mismanagement of a class or a pupil, and Mrs Barrett had hard work to comfort her. She entreated her and Mrs Pipe to leave Manchester and go to London. There, at least, were some who knew what teaching could 46 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. be made, and many who were discontented with what it was. But Mrs Pipe could not consent to break up what had cost so much to establish, and preferred to work in patience at Acomb Street rather than to risk a removal which would involve them in great preliminary loss, and which might prove to be a disastrous venture. " We can take only one step at a time," she said. She had less courage now than her daughter, because she had under- gone and suffered much. She urged that there was no assurance that those girls from Manchester and its neighbourhood, who had been entrusted to them, would be allowed to go with them to London where the increased cost of living, of visiting teachers, of house-rent, would entail higher fees. Mrs Barrett offered to correspond with the parents on the subject, but for a time Mrs and Miss Pipe felt the necessity of avoiding so precarious an experiment. For four years, therefore, the school continued to be held at 27 Acomb Street, and prospered in whatever department Miss Pipe presided. She wrestled with her difficulties, but did not alto- gether prevail, and an enormous proportion of the teaching fell necessarily to her share. We have only too little information about these four years. Mrs Toyne tells us : "I remember very well what my feelings were when I first found myself in the schoolroom at Acomb Street, Manchester, and saw before me, not the conventional schoolmistress of 1852-6.] SCHOOL-MOTHER. 47 my past experience, but one who seemed little more than a girl herself, who was charming, graceful, and bright, and yet who seemed to carry about with her such an awe-inspiring influence. Such a new experience seemed to shake the foundations of all my old ideas of school. I felt almost frightened. Fear could not live long in the warmth of that genial influence. The only fear that lived was the offspring of persistent wrong- doing. Very soon the schoolmistress was merged in the school-mother, and the school became an- other home. The little school at Acorn b Street was a perfect home, Mrs Pipe was so sympathetic, and took such a keen interest in everything and every- body. Miss Pipe seemed to be always teaching us and helping us directly and indirectly. Her questions seemed to make everything much more useful and understandable to us. ... There were six boarders at Acomb Street. The day-pupils were girls, except two little boys ; one was Moses Paul, a charming child, the pet and darling of the school. We all curtseyed when we entered the room, and we used anxiously to watch for his entrance that we might afresh marvel at and admire the salaam of little Moses. We had a writing-mistress, and the copies she gave us were passages from Shakespeare and Wordsworth. We had Mr Leo Grindon for botany, and Mr Barlow for music. There was a Miss Chalk for very young children." One teacher in Manchester had caught and com- 48 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [OH. n. prehended a glimpse of the new light. This was Mr Leo Grindon, author of 'Walks and Wild Flowers/ and its companion volume, ' The Man- chester Flora.' Miss Pipe had been a member of his Saturday class in the summer months ever since Dr Hodgson had left Chorlton, and with her friend Miss Needham shared its long rambles over moors and rough places, along the canal, by meres, ponds, and ditches, in woods and pastures, by waysides and hedge-banks. He would take his pupils to some fixed locality within a radius of eighteen miles round Manchester, seek, each in its habitat, plants, trees, shrubs, and flowers, point out the conditions needed by each, the family to which it belonged, its relatives, its structure. He had a special partiality for trees, and expected his pupils to note, name, and learn all that could be known about them, whether indigenous or im- ported. This feature of those delightful rambles appealed especially to Miss Pipe, and she trans- ferred it to her own list of things essential to be taught. During the winter months Mr Grindon gave lessons on botany at 27 Acomb Street. In the spring of 1855 Mr George MacDonald was in Manchester, teaching and lecturing. Miss Pipe heard some of his lectures on Wordsworth, and was so drawn into comprehension and appre- ciation of the poet that she asked him to give her elder girls some lessons on his poems. These ful- filled her conception of what readings from the 1855.] AMBLESIDE. 49 poets should be, and not only enlarged her own gift for their fine and sincere interpretation, but, along with her reverence for Dr Arnold, whose life by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley she was reading, they became the incentive to a holiday in the Lake district at midsummer of that year, of which some reminiscences survive. On June 12 the school broke up, and on June 13 Mrs Pipe and she started for Ambleside, where they found rooms in a charming cottage at the head of Windermere. Next morning they spent by Stock Ghyll Force, "mamma walking sedately on the grass, and I slipping and scrambling on the rocks and bushes below in search of ferns and flowers. In the afternoon we rowed on the Lake from Waterhead to Low Wood, whence we rambled home over the wooded slopes of Wans- fell, calling on our way at a primitive farmhouse, where we drank some warm milk, and saw bread baked on a frying-pan over a wood fire. . . . The next morning, as we were going up the Keswick Road, we paused at Miss Martineau's gate to speak to her good - natured Methodist gardener, who seems much attached to his mis- tress. ' She's always behaved very handsome by me/ he said. In turning away, we asked if we were on the right track for Rydal Mount. ' Oh ay,' quoth the man, ' stright up the road to Rydal Mount ; that's wheer Mester Woddsworth lived : great friend o' Miss Martineau's ; ye'll ha' heard o' Mester Woddsworth maybe ? He were D 50 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [OH. II. reckoned a very nice sort o' gentleman.' To this nice gentleman's house we afterwards went, and walked about his garden and on the grassy terrace, whence so many eyes whose light is quenched have looked on Winandermere and its beautiful valley. " In going to Rydal Mount, we passed a spot of yet deeper interest to me, more beautiful than any other in the Lake district to all teachers who love and honour their work, Fox How, the vacation residence of Dr Arnold, the home where he hoped to rest in his old age. And he would have rested there, but that the work which he did so nobly was finished sooner than he had expected, and he rested from it in one of those many mansions that are more beautiful than even Fox How. The greatest charm of the place lies in its associations with a man, a true man; one who realised the dignity and excellence of complete manhood, ' valiant for the truth upon the earth,' ' speaking the truth in love.' No feebleness or idleness of head or heart marred the power and symmetry of his character. He lived in earnest. He lived to purpose. The mountain, at whose foot his beloved home stood, was no inapt emblem of himself, bold and steadfast, not to be swayed by winds or shaken by tempests, alike unaltered by the drear, cold, mists of wintry weather and the flattering beams of a summer sun ; and like the many springs that keep Loughrigg verdant and sylvan, there were in his nature springs of deep and 1855.] DR ARNOLD. 51 tender feeling that kept life always fresh and lovely with kind words and deeds. There are no valleys so lovely, no mountains so grand, no breezes blowing over them so refreshing, as a character like this. Moral beauty is more glad- dening than physical." Another entry reads : " Not even a daisy grew on Wordsworth's grave, but I have taken the liberty to plant some primroses there, and his favourite little spring celandine. We read Words- worth with a heightened pleasure here, for some of his poems were probably penned in the very room in which I am writing. This cottage was occupied for three winters by his married daughter, and Wordsworth himself used to come over to see her every day and spend several hours, often bringing his friends." On Sunday, June 24, she wrote : " To service at Rydal. Sat in Mrs Arnold's pew, in a corner corresponding to Mrs Wordsworth's. Mrs Words- worth is a most interesting and venerable old lady. She cannot see to read, but she stood up whenever the service required and joined very devoutly in all the responses. Heard a foolish sermon about John the Baptist, in which it was inferentially enjoined upon us to take all opportunities of call- ing men of progress, who think for themselves, a * generation of vipers,' since ' no language could be more fitting or more exactly descriptive ' ! Was privileged to hear the same sermon again in the evening at Ambleside." 52 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. One afternoon she " called at Fox How, found Mrs Arnold from home, left a card, and went into the garden. There I rambled about for an hour, under the very trees that Arnold loved, and on the grass he mowed, and saw from his own points of view the hills standing about his home even as other mountains ' stood about Jerusalem.' I would fain live as he lived, and die a death like his, sudden and serene." On June 26 Mrs and Miss Pipe left Ambleside for Keswick, journeying on the top of a stage- coach and four. From Keswick they drove up beautiful Borrowdale to Grange, where they found comfortable lodgings, and revelled in Derwent- water, its meadows, and the fells. Miss Pipe was meditating deeply upon her work, and was at times overcome by its greatness and importance. On July 1 she wrote, "How shall I ever become an educator? Education appears to me continu- ally more complex, a more vast, difficult, arduous undertaking. I have but an imperfect notion of the result to be attained, and as to the means which ought to be employed I am full of doubt. A boundless, unnavigable sea leading to an un- explored continent lies before me. * After all, be of good heart, the affairs of the world will be conducted as heretofore by the foolishness of man and the wisdom of God,' so said some Scotch bishop." An entry for July 6 is a glimpse into her nature. "I hope I shall live a better life after 1855.] A MORNING'S HAPPINESS. 53 this morning's happiness. I cannot put my joy and admiration into words. Is not that a hint to me, a divine hint, that my gratitude must utter itself in something higher than words, in a meek, pure, devoted life ? I felt as I stood under a tree by the Derwent some of the old child's life in the things around me, intimately, one with them, my own life absorbed and lost in their life, flowing in the river, resting in the mountains, stirring in the wind and wind-waved branches, and springing up and dancing in the flowers. This life is deeper than admiration and enjoyment. I made no attempt to enjoy myself, but simply existed. ' Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things for ever speaking, That nothing of itself shall come, But we must still be seeking.' Let me put down the things, however, to re- fresh my thoughts another day. The Derwent, spread out into a sort of small lake or pond, stretching away on either side through trees, some of them bending over it, almost resting on the ' bright blue river ' ; a small stream rippling brightly over stones entering the river ; moun- tains in the distance gleaming indistinctly through the hot haze; beautiful hills, soft, rich, varied, covered with summer -leaved trees ; the heather just purpling on the grey crags ; morning dew still on the grass in shady places, glistening like white, purple, green, and yellow gems ; little 54 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. webs full of dewdrops like fragments of a rain- bow lying here and there on the blades of grass ; a perfect harebell and a bud ; St John's wort creeping from under the root of a tree, the root a canopy for it, and the little starry flowers glad of its shelter ; a dragon-fly with prismatic gauze wings skimming over the river and up the rippling brook ; minnows and a small trout swimming in the clear shallows ; the clouds asleep in the sky, soft white clouds fast asleep ; a pleasant breeze ; wood-music. Amid such things the human soul is an ^Eolian harp, passive, stirred to sweet music." " These holidays," she wrote on July 9, " have made me better acquainted with several great men, and have thereby made me wealthier." The great men were Wordsworth, whose poems she was reading and re-reading with delight ; Coleridge, whose ' Biographia Liter aria ' was furnishing her mind with new and expanding points of view and deepening the intellectual bases of her faith ; and Southey, whose acquaint- ance as a poet she was beginning to make. She heard many open-air " preachings," saw a "clipping" of sheep, and was struck by the absence of drinking and swearing amongst the shepherds ; rode often for four hours at a stretch on a Lodore pony ; utilised rainy days for cor- respondence on school- business ; drove Mrs Pipe twenty-four miles to Patterdale on July 18, and kept up with the mail-coach over the moors on the 1855.] WINTER READING. 55 way back. The holiday ended on July 23, with a ride to Buttermere, Mrs Pipe being driven by their landlord. " We dined at the inn where Mary of Buttermere lived ; after dinner rode past Crummock Water ; had a magnificent view of the Vale of Lorton, with the Solway Firth and the Scotch mountains beyond, and over Whinlatter Gap. Mamma came back past the Vale of Newlands, and I rode round through Keswick, making inquiries at the coach-office." Her reading during the autumn of 1855 in- cluded a ' Monumental History of Egypt/ Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's series ; Bunsen's 'Researches'; and Kitto's ' Biblical Literature.' Mr and Mrs Barrett did not cease to urge their friends to come to London ; and finally Miss Pipe asked Mrs Barrett to fulfil her promise of writing to the parents of their immediate pupils. The answers were reassuring. Some of those who sent their daughters as day - pupils to Acomb Street, ex- pressed their desire to send them as boarders to London ; and all who had daughters with her decided to entrust them to her continued care. Miss Pipe fixed upon Clapham Park as the suburb which she preferred. In those days it was indeed a most desirable place of residence, full of stately houses surrounded by gardens and grounds which occupied large areas. As her pupils belonged to Wesley an families, it was important that the school should be near a Methodist chapel, and that was to be found on Brixton Hill at a pleasant 56 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. walking distance. Her friends made inquiries for her, and found a house to let in King's Road. When the holidays of 1856 began, she went alone to London, drove out to see the house, found it suitable, saw the agents and opened negotiations for a short lease. At home there was much to do. Mrs Pipe was anxious about the change, but her daughter, not yet twenty-five years old, conquered every obstacle, secured a tenant for the house in Acomb Street, and effected with Mr Brazil's and Mr Mayson's assistance all the busi- ness arrangements necessary to their removal, which was carried out on June 27, 1856. The house, called Latham Lodge, had at its back a good garden, beyond which were the fields and grounds of some large houses in Clarence Road, so that from the chief class- room nothing could be seen but vistas of : lawn and foliage, little heard but the singing of birds in spring and sometimes the plaint of a stray cushat pigeon in summer. As we have seen, Miss Pipe had read Dr Arnold's 'Life/ with ardent gratitude for the light which it sheds upon the government of a school. His manly and effective handling of boys was in accord with Dr Hodgson's and her own conviction that in order to eliminate what is crude, undisciplined, and wilful in the young, it is necessary to call out what is generous, energetic, and valuable, and to give it scope for 1856.] LALEHAM LODGE. 57 exercise. Dr Arnold's success endorsed this con- viction, and she relied on his example then and always in cases of perplexity. Her reliance was no slavish imitation of what he did in similar circumstances. It was rather due to the habit of reflection and of aim which she shared with the great Headmaster of Rugby, from whose experience she derived the vitalising and forti- fying revelation that he had trod the path before her in the same hope and with the same inter- cession, and that therefore she might venture to expect the same attainment in the lives of girls that he reached in the lives of boys. All this stirred in her thoughts now preoccupied with the new departure of her work. She wished to associate Dr Arnold with it in some way which would keep his memory ever before her. The name of the house meant nothing to her. She had amongst her powers one of seizing upon every detail and making it subserve the purpose of the whole. Latham Lodge became Laleham Lodge, in memory of the school at Laleham where he had first used his power of guiding character. There was meaning in her avoidance of Rugby Lodge, for she herself was still at the tentative stage, and her choice conveyed to herself a reminder not contained in the other name. A letter written on July 16, 1856, gives us a deeply interesting account of what she purposed and planned. It was written to a lady who had 58 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. applied for a prospectus and for some information as to her proposed curriculum : MY DEAR MADAM, In accordance with a note which I have had the pleasure to receive this evening from Miss Farmer, I beg to enclose circulars of my terms. The lady for whom these circulars are intended, would probably be interested in a statement of the principles on which my school is conducted. As I have no means of communica- tion with her, perhaps I may take the liberty to request that you would kindly oblige me by placing this letter in her hands. My mother will have the domestic department under her entire control, and will pay great attention to the health of the young ladies. Education in all its branches is under my own immediate supervision. In the literary department of English, I shall give lessons myself, committing the scientific to examining lecturers, men of mind and culture, whose intellectual influence shall t>e in itself powerful and vitalising, and this in a measure beneficial independently of the information which they undertake to impart. In those branches which are under my own exclusive direction, I shall pursue and further develop the system which I have found to work well hitherto. Considerable attention is paid to composition. In grammar, a well founded sentence from some good author is written on the black-board, separated into its compound clauses and main assertions, and then further subjected to a minute analysis grammatical and logical. Various supplementary exercises too numerous to mention are gone through. No grammati- cal book is committed to memory, but reference is made to a collection of able works by the first grammarians of the day and other writers, for the elucidation of contested points. I teach ancient history in courses of lectures, and examinations on its leading events, taking up the chief nations of antiquity in succession, securing a clear and vivid outline of their history, and connecting the various lines of events by frequent lessons in chronology. Chronology I teach without the use of books, or any puerile system of 1856.] CURRICULUM OF ENGLISH. 59 mnemonics. Headings in modern history are arranged for the pupils, and abstracts furnished by them lessons in geography and chronology being given in connection with all historical studies. Geography physical, political, modern, and classical is taught chiefly by the help of excellent German maps, standard works of modern trav- ellers, and diagrams, which I have been allowed to copy from the private collection of a scientific friend. In poetry some poem worth studying is chosen for examination, such as Milton's " Lycidas," which one of my classes has just gone through, Involved constructions are simplified; mythological, historical, literary, and other obscure allusions rendered intelligible; figures of speech and etymological difficulties cleared up ; imagery, thought, and sentiment developed and thrown into full, clear prose. When a passage has been thoroughly analysed and sifted, it is committed to memory. To this lesson on poetry and to kindred exercises I attach great importance, believing that a sound and culti- vated imagination has much to do with the happiness and right regulation of life. From a diseased imagination great folly and serious moral mischief may result. But it cannot be kept in health without full nourishment. Arithmetic and history, however excellent in training other powers of the mind, exert no influence upon this. [In later and better historiographical times, Miss Pipe partially revised this opinion.] Flashy novels, poor moral tales, sentimental autobiographies, and all such morbid trash tend to enfeeble and demoralise this noble faculty which was given us for grand purposes, but has been so mournfully neglected and abused that the very term itself comes often to be con- founded with that of sickly, futile vagaries. In some of our fine English poems, grandly conceived and exquisitely finished, abundant material may be found. The ideas contained in them, skilfully divested of obscurities that lie in the diction, will fire and fascinate the imagina- tion, and possess it to the exclusion of meaner occupants. These and all other studies are linked together by a weekly lesson on etymology on the derivation, structure, 60 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. and history of the English language. All my own lessons I carefully prepare before giving them, and endeavour to combine them in such a manner that they shall be recipro- cally corroborative. A Protestant French governess of talent and high education is engaged to reside in the house to superintend preparation for masters, and to teach her own language, or rather languages, for though born and educated in Paris, she speaks Italian and French with equal elegance, being the daughter of a French father and an Italian mother. During the greater part of the day I am with the young ladies myself. Much of their time in the evening is spent with me in the drawing-room, where they read and work with me, or sing and play, and have a microscope at their service as well as other means of recreation. To the accomplishments, as they are commonly called, I give due honour and assiduous attention, believing them to be of real and great value, and in their proper place a measure of most healthful influence. And I hold that it is possible to combine a serious and thorough education with the fullest attention to whatever things are externally graceful. But while these things are duly cared for, my energies and efforts are mainly concentrated on the training of those powers of mind and heart that fit a woman for the thoughful and intelligent performance of her duties in life ; the cultivation of judgment and imagination, the implanting of sound tastes and the formation of sound habits. The lessons of each day are preceded by a morning Bible-class. Through this instrumentality chiefly my school has been governed. The girls have studied diligently and conducted themselves well without the constraint of artificial stimulus no prizes, good or bad marks, or medals, no stated rewards or punishments of any kind whatever. Several of the masters have said there must be something peculiarly excellent in the girls themselves, or else in the methods of their govern- ment, for they seldom find such pupils elsewhere, so set upon doing their duty just because it is their duty. That which I aim at in the Bible-class is to explain and enforce the bearings of Christianity on common life, with special 1856.] THE BIBLE-CLASS. 61 reference naturally to the duties and dangers of girls at school. They are taught to estimate events and actions not by their impressions on the senses, but according to the laws under which they range ; to measure greatness by motive and not by result ; and to ennoble and consecrate their daily doings from the greatest down to the least by Christian principle. Though the conscience be vital and the heart devout, many grievous inconsistencies may yet be fallen into unless there be clear light. It is to kindle this light that the Bible-class exists, and also to cherish those aspirations after excellence, and those solemn thoughts that stir within the heart, as childhood advances into growth and youth expands and blossoms into womanhood. Education in its widest sense I take to be a process by which all the faculties of our human nature are carried to full harmoni- ous development, a process conducted by manifold agencies human and divine, and continuing through this life into that which is to come. The education of the nursery should prepare for that of the schoolroom, the education of school for that of life, and the discipline of mature life for the onward advances of eternity. Believing this, I aim at something beyond the giving of an exterior polish, or the bare impression of facts upon the memory. Instruction of all kinds is throughout subordinate to education. I trust that life, wisdom, and grace may be granted me to realise fully that system of education which has formed itself within my mind, and has been gradually assuming symmetry and distinction under the experience and meditation of seven years during which I have been employed in teaching. This work of teaching I love and honour. It is to me no dreary necessity, no mere mechanical routine. I am to some extent aware of its solemn responsibilities, perhaps a full consciousness would be so overwhelming as to paralyse effort. And I am keenly alive to the sorrow of its occasional failures and disappointments. But all these things I accept willingly, remembering how often and how sweetly its hopes are fulfilled. I must beg you to forgive me for troubling you with the transmission of these details. I fear I may have 62 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. seemed diffuse, but I do not know how to give any definite notion of that distinctive character which I wish the school to maintain without entering at some length into particu- lars. I have the honour to be, dear madam, most respect- fully yours, K E. PIPE. The school at Laleham Lodge did not provide classes for day-pupils. Her success at Greenheys led the chief Methodist authorities to propose that the London school should be a means of education in her sense of the word for the daughters of Methodists. Many members of that body in Yorkshire and Lancashire were engaged in manu- facture or commerce, and were profiting from the extraordinary impetus given to trade in cottons and woollens by the substitution of machinery for hand-looms. Their homes were more affluent in comfort than in culture, and Miss Pipe was warmly urged to devote herself more particularly to the new generation of girls belonging to such homes. The suggestion appealed to her strongly, for at this time nearly all her ties, interests, experience, were connected with the Wesleyan Church, and she entertained the hope of helping its new generation to higher standards of the art of living. In speaking of those days long after, she said : " My ambition was to get hold of these girls with money and without refine- ment from their earlier years, and to open their eyes to all that is best in this life and in that which is to come. The inrush of wealth without the discipline of generations behind it was apt 1856.] WESLEYAN PUPILS. 63 to vulgarise their minds, and I desired to place before them, and to awake within them, their responsibility, their duties, their relation to the Giver of all things, their kinship with the poor, the worth of all things 'lovely and of good re- port/ the worthlessness of an existence which buys but does not create its life. I knew how important it was to train a generation of wives and mothers." All her first pupils, therefore, were Wesleyans, and all came from Manchester and its neighbourhood. Indeed, for many years Lancashire and Yorkshire were the chief sources from which her school was filled. Mrs Toyne was one of the earliest pupils at Laleham Lodge, and writes : " Sixteen happy girls found them- selves in a new home. Every one was so good to us, and the machinery went so smoothly. Our one wish seemed to be always to remain only sixteen in number, so that we might get the whole of Miss Pipe to ourselves. " There was such a delightful spirit of cama- raderie amongst us. How well I remember one little instance of it. One Sunday Miss Pipe was not very well, and we wondered, as our usual time for being with her came round, what we could do to give her pleasure. A deputation was despatched to ask if she would like us to sing as usual. The answer came, asking us to sing as near to her bedroom as possible, and with the message came a programme. Precious little document ! I possess it still, in that 64 HIGHEE EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. beautiful writing so characteristic of her. There were several hymns ; a trio : ' Stand up and bless the Lord,' and it ended with Psalm cxix., many notes of exclamation following. The programme was gone through to the end of verse 176. We loved to try and give her pleasure. As our knowledge of her and our power to appreciate her increased, we felt more than ever that such a life and character as hers was a revelation of a possible life which we had not realised before, and this revelation led us to thank God then, as we have thanked Him through all the years since, for the benefit of this friendship." From Mrs Toyne, also, we learn the names of the teachers. These were the lady alluded to in Miss Pipe's letter, who taught French, Italian, and Spanish ; Dr Hausmann, who taught Ger- man ; Dr Nicolai, who gave lectures on physical geography and other subjects ; Mr Cock, whose department was arithmetic and Euclid ; Mr Stern- dale Bennett (afterwards Sir William) for music ; Madame Ferrari and Mr Monk for singing ; Mr Monk for part singing and harmony ; and Miss Chatterton for the harp. There were two other teachers for the younger music pupils. Dr Nicolai was of great assistance to Miss Pipe in the carrying out of her plans. His lec- tures were most stimulating, and as he required and corrected abstracts of what he taught from his pupils, they were invested with much import- ance. His name lingered long after his work at 1856-59.] MISS PIPE'S TEACHING. 65 King's College compelled him to leave, and is still attached to the square sheets of abstract paper used at Laleham, a kind of ruled paper which he introduced at the Lodge. Another pupil of those years was Miss Bousfield, after- wards Mrs Pickering. She writes : "I was at Laleham Lodge during the years 1858 and 1859. It was impossible not to be strongly impressed and influenced by Miss Pipe's teaching. Her starting-point was that our education was only then beginning^ and that education was a busi- ness for all our lives. She always impressed upon us that the result of our contact with others should be that they would ' take knowledge of us that we had been with Jesus.' Her teaching as to ' Personal Talk ' (with Wordsworth's sonnet as her text) made a deep impression on my mind, and has influenced my life. To Miss Pipe, too, I owe my delight in the study of history. She taught us as far as was possible with the very limited means then at our disposal how to study history, and she encouraged us to read all round a subject, and tried to help us to develop our own powers of thinking. This kind of teaching is happily within every one's reach nowadays, but it was not so at that time, and Miss Pipe was a real pioneer. She was herself strongly imbued with the ideas of Dr Arnold and John Stuart Mill, and perhaps we hardly realised how much we owed to this fact." When Dr Nicolai ceased to lecture at Laleham E 66 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. Lodge, George MacDonald took his place. He had already given an occasional lesson at Acomb Street while he was in Manchester ; but now for a time he undertook a series of his wonderful readings of Shakespeare's plays, with the explanatory comments and ethical inductions which made them so fascinating. Miss Pipe used to say that, although she constantly read the greater plays, she never understood all that they meant until George MacDonald illuminated them. But her labours did not cease with her daily home tasks and the many hours spent with her girls. She gave lessons as well in a house not far from Laleham Lodge, and calculated her work for every week-day at fourteen hours. Her great anxiety to pay back what was lent to Mrs Pipe and herself by some of their oldest friends in Manchester, in order to make their removal and increased expense for furnishing and starting possible, accounted for this accumulated work. Fortunately, the sixteen girls who filled Laleham Lodge not only never failed them, but one of their first difficulties was want of room. The great increase in terms, from thirty guineas at Acomb Street to eighty guineas at Laleham Lodge, was of immense help to them in paying both interest and capital on this debt, and by 1860 the whole was discharged, and Mrs Pipe wept tears of gratitude to Providence, who had not only opened the way for them, but had brought them through in safety. 1858-60.] SUCCESS. 67 Miss Pipe shared in her gratitude, but not in her desire to remain stationary. During the second and third years of their stay, every term brought far more applications than they were able to consider, and she felt that the same costly staff of teachers would suffice for twice as many pupils. She had great courage, both moral and physical, and at this time her health was unfailing, one of its advantages being the gift of undisturbed sleep at night, so that she woke completely refreshed and eager for the day's duties. Beyond the garden stretched a lovely expanse of ground, with lawns, wooded alleys, shrubberies, and gardens. On the lawns stood groups of trees planted by Cubitt himself, and behind them rose a well-built house of which he had been the architect. To Miss Pipe the place presented innumerable attractions. She would meditate on all that could be done with such space, seclusion, and accommodation. But, alas ! this Naboth's vineyard was owned and inhabited, and there was no prospect whatever of its acquisition. Mrs Pipe was distressed at her hopeless and fantastic schemes, and would chide her daughter for entertaining them. She shrank from failure, and was content with their present success. She bade "Annie" thank God for that and give up her dreams. But there was more than dream- ing in Miss Pipe's mind. Hygiene at that time in its infancy, and abhorred of the " general," 68 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. II. had found at once welcome and understanding from her. Those fields and alleys and that am- plitude of space appealed to the demand it had aroused. She saw them filled with girls at play or work ; she pictured them clustered round her at botany classes, gardening, or enjoying happy breathing - times ; she saw them running, swing- ing, playing at ball upon the fields, skating in winter upon the little lake, in summer grouped upon the lawns at archery and la grace. To her the whole meant a development of her ideals large lecture -rooms, studies and music- room, more bath-rooms, space for books, collec- tions, maps, and illustrative pictures. But while the place was occupied she pictured its aptness for her uses in vain. Dr Hodgson had been the first to draw her attention to the study of hygiene. He had, in some interval of his now restless life, been giving lectures on " Health and its Laws," as well as lectures on "Wealth and its Laws." T cannot find out whether these were given at Laleham Lodge or whether Miss Pipe heard them else- where. It is certain that they were printed in the later 'Fifties, and that she possessed the little volume. It introduced her to Combe's 1 Physiology ' and cognate books, and it opened to her a new view of the immense importance of knowledge concerning health and what made for and against it. All these years their faithful servant Anne was 1858.] SERVANTS. 69 with them, and gave to her younger mistress a devotion which was not the less valuable because it was sometimes expressed in criticism on which no other person would have ventured. As she brushed out Miss Pipe's waving and curling hair night and morning, she would say with Puritan directness, " Don't imagine, Miss Annie, that your hair is anything but red just red." Anne was not gifted with the artist eye, which knew its colour to be pale golden bronze ; but she was gifted with a loyal heart and a stern sense of duty which helped to carry Mrs and Miss Pipe through the stress of that time. Miss Pipe always felt a great responsibility towards those who served her, and occupied herself with their needs, bodily and spiritual, as if they were her pupils. A touching instance of this is recalled by a note from Miss Sayer, who lived at Laleham Lodge for two years as a younger servant, and who tells us that during that time Miss Pipe used to take her to her room to read the Bible and pray with her. Miss Sayer, who was in later life to become of great assistance to Miss Pipe, and to whom we shall have frequent occasion to allude, left for another place in 1858, and received from her the following letter, written on the Good Friday of that year : MY DEAR GIRL, I was glad to hear of you a few days ago through your old friends here, to whom you wrote. I 70 HIGHER EDUCATION AND FIRST TEACHING. [CH. n. have often felt anxious to know how you were going on. I send you a little book with my best wishes, and hope you will derive some help and guidance from it. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. He will put you in the right place and give you the right work to do, and make you able to do it, if only you are willing to be His. Give yourself to Him that He may do what He will with you. Christ has, as on this day, made an atonement for you, that your Father, whom you have grieved, might be at peace with you and reconciled. Therefore you may kneel to Him and trust in Him without fear. Ask that His Good Spirit may come and dwell within you and make you like Christ. " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Speak as He would have spoken, do as He would have done. You may. Christ died in order to make it possible for you. Commit your way to Him. Pray Him to guide you. Eead your Bible, and believe every word in it. Tell Him that you need a Friend, a Comforter, a Teacher, and that you wish to serve Him and do His will; and you shall not trust and hope in vain. The Lord bless and keep you. Anne, Martha, and Ellen send their love and kind remembrances to you. I am, your sincere friend, HANNAH E. PIPE. The year 1858 ended with the following entry in her diary : "I never felt so deeply interested in my work as I do now, or more determined not to rest upon my oars, but to go on unto perfection. Ten years' experience has brought no weariness, but greater freshness than ever. I do steadfastly purpose commending this purpose to the help of His grace to lead a life of simple union with God. Thus may He work and 1858.] UNION WITH GOD. 71 not I. Thus may He work by me, through me, using me as an instrument, no selfish- ness of mine complicating the simplicity of His work and neutralising the divine energy within me." 72 [CH. in. CHAPTER III. L A L E H A M. (1858-1861.) A LETTER from Miss Pipe to Oliver Wendell Holmes gives us a passing glimpse of her Christmas holiday at Brighton in 1858-59. She read there his ' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table/ with such pleasure and profit that not only did she make extracts from it, but she ventured to write to its author after her return to Clapham Park : DEAR SIR, Going down to Brighton a short time ago to spend a few weeks by the seaside, I took with me a box of Mudie books, and a friend did me the kindness to suggest that your 'Autocrat of the Breakfast Table ' should be put into it. He told me I should find it " delightful reading," an assurance which has been abundantly veri- fied. Your account of the monument " erected as a warning to all who love mutton better than virtue," reminded me of a legend which I met with last summer when travelling in North Devonshire. The identity of the legend I recog- nised immediately; but not remembering the erection of a monumental stone on the spot, I wrote on the subject to a friend residing at Lynemouth, and have received from 1859.] LETTER TO O. W. HOLMES. 73 her in reply the following particulars on the authority of an antiquarian clergyman in the neighbourhood, the vicar of Martinhoe: "There is a large block of granite, which used to be the boundary -stone between the parishes of Combmartin and Trentishoe, that goes by the name of the Hanging Stone, and it was on or by the side of this stone that the man sat down to rest and was strangled by the sheep. This, Mr Scriver says, is supposed to be a fact. It is firmly believed in by the people, and is also related in Fuller's 'Worthies.'" You will no doubt remember whether this locality is that in which you yourself first heard of the sheep-stealer. Possibly the story may be attached to more places than one. I am glad that an accidental acquaintance with this story furnishes me with an apology for writing to you, and thus with an opportunity of thanking you for the great pleasure afforded me by your book. I read it with delight, and, spiritually speaking, took to " solemn black huckleberries " for some time after the book was finished, sympathising with your friends at the boarding-house in their grief at your departure. We, the public, who have enjoyed our- selves so much sitting round your landlady's table, are hoping very much that we may receive an invitation some day to meet you again elsewhere. Mr Carlyle might consider that to ponder a book in golden silence, assimilating its wisest words and convert- ing them into the substance of one's life, is a higher tribute to the excellence of the book than a mere setting forth of one's pleasure and profit in silvern speech to the author. I believe, however, that all such books as yours are received in both ways. Such thoughts will always make for themselves a golden silence in the minds of those who read them ; and even Mr Carlyle, perhaps, would pardon speech when it comes in its proper place namely, after due pause of silence and not instead of it. I will not detain you further with speech, only assuring you that I have read your book in much silence. To this I hope you will not be wholly indifferent, inasmuch as a human being anywhere and always is worth benefit- 74 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. ing. It is a privilege accorded to those who write good books that they shall have more friends than acquaint- ances the usual way of the world being reversed in their favour. I beg you to believe me, very sincerely, such a friend, HANNAH E. PIPE. Mr George MacDonald was lecturing during the autumn term at Laleham Lodge on the Lake poets, and more particularly on the " Sonnets of Wordsworth " and the poems of Coleridge, and of these lectures Miss Pipe took copious notes. Mr MacDonald's ' Phan tastes ' had just been published, and she sent a copy of it to her old friend and teacher, Mr Grindon at Manchester, and was some- what disconcerted by his reception of it. In a letter, dated December 20, 1859, she combats his depreciation : " You ask me what Mr MacDonald's book comes to ? I answer, How can it be ' wonder- fully rich in poetry and imagination ' and come to nothing. I grant you it does not wind up with a q.e.d., but neither does a sunset or a cedar- tree, a cathedral or a strain of fine music. It is not a book of facts, maxims, or principles. But there are other things in the world worth having beside these three. What did those wild woods where you dreamed away the summers of your childhood ' prove or come to ' ? I shall begin to think you are getting acclimatised to Manchester, that its smoke and cotton are telling upon a nature which I had supposed to be smoke- or cotton-proof. But, seriously, I will tell you exactly why I like the book, for I know very distinctly that I can give a 1859.] ' PHANTASTES.' 75 reason for the admiration of it that is in me. I love the book, because when I read it I feel as if I were seven years of age running about the fields and lanes of Kinsley, blown upon by such breezes as I never feel now, and watching bees, birds, flowers, everything bathed in transcendent sun- shine, and all the dumb wild creatures, my dear and intimate friends, from the eyebright under my foot to the shepherd's dog that had more sense than I, and took care of me. When I read ' Phantastes,' somehow, in a manner that I can't explain, I am back again amid this fairy- land, and the cares of life seem less irksome and im- portant. There lurks in the book some hidden subtle antidote to worldliness, something which makes against selfishness and against the tyranny of the outward and the conventional. Now, just for the sake of contrast, think of Bulwer Lytton and his tales. When we read them the world is much with us. They are all gaslight, tinsel, and perfumery. They profess to ' prove or come to ' a wonderful deal of philosophy and the like, but to my mind they are a lie from beginning to end. ' Phantastes ' makes no such professions, and yet I trust the book. I yield myself up to it just as I would to the inarticulate teaching of things that I see and hear in a woodland walk, ferns, harebells, berries, squirrels, dragon-flies, sound of leaves and water and wings, colours of the sky, shadows sleeping or waking on the path. What do these prove or come to ? They have no words 76 LALEHAM. [CH. III. at all, and yet there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. And it is a good voice, pure, soothing, and full of exhortation. If the book does not teach me directly, at least it puts me in tune for listening to teachers, like the music of an organ before service. It is no sermon, but a sermon follows well upon it." Surely this is a piece of singularly delicate criticism, reinforced by a vertebrate standard of the essential. One other letter of 1859 remains to be quoted one of great importance, since it defines her personal attitude towards the religious dogmas of half a century ago. It is written to the Rev. Alfred Barrett, and is dated December 28 : "I believe there are persons who can receive a creed entire from their teachers, and live in it without misgiving ; live well in it, moreover, and die as they have lived. ' It needs not an architect to dwell in a house,' said Goethe, and this no doubt is matter for thankfulness. There is much to be done in the world, and no time for every man to build his own house. Many a man can find rest and shelter in a creed constructed by another than himself by Luther, Calvin, or Wesley. But, again, there are others who must, by the con- stitution of their minds, prove all things for themselves before they can hold fast. They must ask many questions, and not till the questions are answered can they be at rest. Now, I myself do not belong altogether to either of these sets. I have not the full activity of thought which is in 1859.] ATTITUDE TO DOCTRINE. 77 the latter, nor yet can I accept without inquiry all that comes to me by tradition from my fathers like the former. When quite a young child I remember asking myself, ' Am I a Christian and a Protestant because I was born such, or for some deeper and safer reason ? What if I had been born a Catholic, a Unitarian, a Mohammedan ? ' And because I knew that whether I would or not, I must be biassed by my parents' belief, I listened with wariness to the teaching of my natural denomination, and with earnest heed to all that could be said against it or besides. Perhaps I listened even more carefully to strange doctors and doctrines than to those of my own circle, knowing that I must be naturally prejudiced in favour of these and against those. This prejudice I dreaded lest it should defraud me of any truth. But, thank God, I do not scorn the wisdom of my fathers. I receive it with reverent thankfulness and joy. Only because I hold it to be most precious do I sift it. I examine and muse and ponder, guarding as I best may against error that might impoverish my soul's life, and cause me to be worse and weaker than if I fed upon pure truth. I covet understanding that I may order my short life to best advantage and be unhindered by mistakes and ignorance from serving God and my generation before I fall on sleep. I do believe in God the Father Almighty : I believe in the incarnation of His Son, in the divinity of Christ, in His blessed mediation, atone- 78 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. ment, and intercession. I believe in the authority of His life as an example : in His death I see perhaps the cause, and certainly the proof, of God's goodwill to man. If I cannot use on this subject precisely and positively the language which I sometimes hear from the pulpit, yet still I can say that I rest my hope and assurance of salvation on my Saviour's agony and bloody sweat, on His cross and passion, that I do habitually live at peace with God through the blessed know- ledge of a Mediator who has in some sense made, and in every sense proclaimed, a reconciliation for us. I say made in some sense, because this is a subject that I have not fathomed, that perhaps no man or angel ever will fathom ; and I am sure that it is not essential to salvation that our intellect should penetrate and compass this ador- able mystery. Why Christ should suffer to release us I don't know. It is not plain to me as it is to some. I cannot see that the common forms of human justice make this clear. But surely I can believe that it was necessary, and that Christ did it without being able to throw all this into a syllogism or state it like a sum in the Rule of Three. I believe that He, whose name is Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, became a little child for us, and lived, suffered, died, was buried, and rose again, to deliver my soul from death and save me from my sins. Further, I be- lieve in the Holy Ghost. To this article of faith I cling faster than to any other. I believe that all 1859.] CARDINAL TRUTHS. 79 goodness in the world is of His inbreathing, that without Him truth is barren and holiness beyond our reach. I hold that all philosophy, all dis- cipline, thought, culture, all inward and outward safeguards, are vain and dead without the grace and life of God the Spirit. And I believe devoutly and adoringly in the doctrine of Divine Providence. Much of what I hear said respecting God's 'special providence' I hold to be unscrip- tural, unreasonable, shallow, and practically full of mischief, but I praise God seven times a-day for the higher doctrine of general providence, the laws according to which society and the individual are ruled. On these cardinal truths of our holy faith I repose as on a rock that no storms can shake. I am never harassed by any secret doubt of them. I think, too, that a spirit of unshrink- ing inquiry has helped me to completer views of truth and to a securer hold upon it. I have read ' dangerous ' books and listened to ' dangerous ' men not only without fear, but with eager hope of gaining some knowledge from them and of laying it up in my garner, while praying for discernment to distinguish between grain and empty husks that look like grain and are not. If it be said, ' Can any good thing come from them ? ' I would answer, ' Come and see.' It is not safe to assume that a man can be no prophet because he is called a Galilean. But amid all inquiry I would ever look up to the Father of Lights, pleading His promise, ' They shall be all taught of God.' If I demur to 80 LALEHAM. [CH. in. opinions commonly received among us, they are chiefly on such points as these the Fall of man in its effects on the laws of providence and nature ; the effect of Christ's atonement on those who err from the truth ; the resurrection of the body ; the meaning of world and worldliness ; the difference between religion and morality, involving the doc- trine of ' entire sanctification.' Many notions, moreover, I hold interrogatively in my mind, with- out assent or dissent, to be considered at con- venient seasons." Miss Pipe was just twenty- seven years old when she wrote this remarkable letter to Mr Barrett, who was then Principal of Richmond Wesleyan College. It had been called forth by strictures on her mental and spiritual breadth, not only from self-satisfied ignorance, but even from some of the higher Wesleyan authorities, who demurred to her introducing the teaching of men like Dr Hodgson and George MacDonald into her school. It is difficult to understand the orthodox mind of fifty years ago, except on the premiss that it had not yet detatched itself from hard and fast tradition, and that in the majority of Wesleyans and of other devout bodies, dogma was still a fetish, and stupefied or paralysed insight and spirituality. That a man so childlike and Christ-like as George MacDonald should have come under the ban of these worthy nobodies is a curious comment on a piety which had eyes, but saw not the vision of God ; which had ears, but heard not His voice. 1858.] MR CORDEROY. 81 It is noteworthy that she did not even mention in her defence the subject of these two great teachers and men. Already her splendid gift of silence made her position unassailable. She recognised the right of parents to be unable to grasp her aim, to remove their daughters from her school if they had a mind to do so, and she also recognised their right to know what manner of Methodist she was, since it was more important to them than her growing spirituality ; but she did not acknowledge their claim to dictate to her what the govern- ment of her school should or should not be, and who might or might not be placed on its staff of teachers. At Christmas 1858, three of her eighteen boarders were removed. None the less, she was immediately concerned with the important question of remaining at Laleham Lodge or re- moving. Amongst the new friends made in Clapham Park were Mr and Mrs Edward Corde- roy, with the members of whose family she became always more and more closely associated in mutual trust and appreciation. Mr Corderoy was, as she often said in later life, one of the most finely honourable men she had ever known, and soon it was her custom to entrust all matters of im- portance to his judgment and experience. Thus a strong friendship was formed between them. Mr Corderoy was on the side of removal, and in a business-like little document, written by him, we are told in few words the arguments for and against this important step. Miss Pipe's reasons F 82 LALEHAM. [OH. ill. for moving are clearly stated. For three years that is, almost from the time of her arrival in Clapham Park she had seen the necessity of larger accommodation, and by 1859 this had be- come a conviction. The dilemma was whether to reduce the number of pupils or to transfer the school to more suitable quarters. Her growing faith in the value of hygiene obliged her to face the fact that the crowded state of her school was prejudicial to the health and comfort of her girls. It was inconvenient for classes, and for the teach- ing of music and singing. There was insufficient room both in bedrooms and class-rooms, which it was impossible to furnish as completely as she desired with wardrobes, bookshelves, and cup- boards. Then the grounds were too restricted, and not sufficiently private for recreation or study in the summer months. Every term brought new applications, and sometimes she was obliged to refuse from six to ten candidates for admission. Mr Corderoy urged her to look over houses to let in the Park, as well as at Streatham, Brixton, Richmond, Sydenham, and the north of London. This was vainly done, with infinite pains, and even for a brief time she thought of building, and examined sites and estimates. But their cost deterred her from this project, and she fell back upon the possible purchase of a satisfactory lease- hold. For a whole year she continued, at a great disadvantage, to refuse a larger number of pupils than fifteen, and to look over her small domain to 1859.] HOUSE IN CLARENCE ROAD. 83 the beautiful grounds of Mr Cuthill's house with longing eyes. One day, passing along its front- age on Clarence Road, she saw a board set up announcing that the remainder lease was to be sold. She took down the agent's address, and went into town to his office. There she was in- formed that sixty-six years of leasehold were to be sold for 5500. It was a considerable sum, but she had reason to believe that it could be met in instalments, of which the first would amount to nearly one-half of the whole ; for not only had the 1500 left by Mr Pipe remained intact, but the school in Laleham Lodge had paid off all debt and expense, and had realised 1000 of clear profit. Miss Pipe went to see the house, and found it most desirable. Large public rooms, with ample light, many bedrooms, big and little, kitchens, storerooms, housekeeper's room, excellent out-of-door coal and wood cellars, and above all, the beautiful lawns, fields, gardens, pond over- starred with water-lilies, made its acquisition most desirable. Mr Corderoy sums up its advantages as follows : " In the character of the building, the extent, form, and privacy of the grounds, the adaptation of both house and grounds to the purposes of a school, it is entirely suitable, and in the neighbourhood not to be surpassed." Miss Pipe opened negotiations with the agent, and then told her mother what she had done. But Mrs Pipe was startled and full of misgivings. That very term they had refused ten new pupils, 84 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. and their number was just fifteen. Miss Pipe wrote to the parents of the ten, acquainted them with their possible change to a house which would accommodate twenty-five girls, and asked them if, in the case of their removal, their daughters would be sent to them. When most of the parents intimated their good-will, Mrs Pipe was somewhat comforted, and agreed to the venture, but with great perturbation at times, so much so that Miss Pipe caught its infection, and at the last moment was on the point of drawing back. She wrote to Mr Corderoy, " Can I see you this even- ing? Mr Reece has just left us. He came to bring the agreement for signature. And now that the moment has arrived for concluding this affair, I am seized with a panic and cannot do it. All the calculations and negotiations of the last three weeks have utterly disconcerted and terrified me. I don't think we can get a sufficient number of pupils at 100 guineas to meet the expenses of this new house, and I fear we have made a fatal mistake altogether. This will startle you, I dare say." There is no date to this letter, but it must have been written in the spring of 1860. Mr Corderoy saw both Mrs and Miss Pipe, and so revived their courage and hope that they faced the agreement and signed it. Indeed, he guar- anteed to a considerable extent the price to be paid. It was Mr Corderoy 's faith, insight, and generosity that made the transfer possible, and those who knew and loved Laleham will not fail I860.] THE NEW HOUSE. 85 to bless the memory of a man to -whom Miss Pipe looked as her most faithful and honoured friend until his death, and of whom she often spoke as such. Some months elapsed before the new house was put in order, but the long summer holiday, transferred from June to August and part of September, gave opportunity for the flitting and furnishing. In September 1860, about twenty- two girls arrived, and the school at Laleham began. The name was not only carried over from the Lodge, but Miss Pipe ventured to write to Mrs Arnold at Fox How, to ask her for shoots of the willow-trees at Rugby, which, as well as those at Laleham on the Thames and at Fox How, were originally transplanted from a willow- tree at Slattswoods, Dr Arnold's early home. These were sent, and set round the pond, where they and their successors still flourish, in spite of the destructive grubs of the goat-moth, which injured some of them. The reminiscences of those who were pupils at Laleham in the early 'Sixties will throw a better light on its work and discipline than any bio- graphical platitudes, and we are fortunate in pos- sessing several of these, one of them already included in the 'Laleham Magazine' for 1907. Miss Corderoy, although not a pupil, was to be a dear and intimate friend, and had just returned from a school where the deadening processes of wretched teaching and discipline, " which left 86 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. nothing to a girl's sense of honour," were in full rigour. She was invited to the first birthday party at Laleham, November 27, 1860, and was astonished at the contrast between what she had endured and her " earliest vision of Laleham life." "It seemed past believing that schoolgirls should be moving about and talking at their ease with one another, with their teachers, with dear Mrs Pipe, and with her who was the radiant centre of all, herself not much older than some of them- selves, and full of that intellectual and spiritual vitality that attracted all that was most loving and most responsive, and at the same time in- spired with something like awe, so that both reverence and affection grew from more to more, and things that were pure and lovely and of good report seemed the only things worth think- ing on. It was this uplifting that came into the whole idea of school-life through the personality and teaching of Miss Pipe, and it is the value of this great emancipation that lives undimmed in my thoughts of her." From the beginning, as we have seen, it was this wonderful combination of gifts and powers, this beauty of holiness through which shone intellect, purpose, courage, glowing with insight and sympathy, which framed and established her realm, evolved its code of laws by inspira- tion rather than by legislation, and won im- plicit obedience and loyalty. Rules there were, which provided rather for nice manners in bed- I860.] RULES. 87 room, study, and lecture-room than for restriction of liberty ; but these were reduced to a minimum, and would have been repealed altogether had they not been more helpful than irksome. They formed a consensus of opinion on refinement of habits and courtesy, which was of value in its effect on new and unlessoned pupils. Punctual- ity was one of these, a primary law both of consideration for others and of duty towards oneself ; quiet behaviour on staircases and in halls was another ; reverence at all services, whether in church or at household prayers, but such habits were catching in the atmosphere of Laleham. How Miss Pipe's personal influence brought about this silent inoculation of good manners will ap- pear, as our narrative is enriched by spontaneous tributes from those whose lives it transformed. Miss Lidgett, who was with Miss Pipe at both Laleham Lodge and Laleham, tells us in the 'Laleham Magazine' : "There is a kind of school for which Miss Pipe had little respect. She never aimed at making hers a ' Finishing School.' She said we were and could be only at the beginning of things, that we could only lay foundations, and she hoped that after leaving school we might still have time for quiet prepara- tion for the duties of later life. She knew there were many things well worth knowing that she would not try to teach in our short time. She was always opposed to what I may call com- petitive learning. In many cases it may be un- 88 LALEHAM. [CH. III. avoidable. But she held that true education must be single-minded, and must aim without distraction at truth and exactness, and it must go with discipline of character ; that she did not care so much that her girls should be noticeably brilliant, but that they should be true and duti- ful, gentle and considerate towards each other and all others. While sternly set against slack- ness and carelessness, her tender respect for the conscientious effort of a backward girl was a thing never to be forgotten. ' Do your best. You may not succeed in this particular thing, but be sure it will turn to good at last.' How wonderfully she made us see that salvation was a matter for every day, that Christ was at our side in every conflict with evil, either in our own hearts or in outside things. How she tried to teach us to watch against worldliness, that we should never give way to vain excitement as to the impression we might be making on other people, but whether in company or alone, we should live simply in the presence of God ; that we should not dream or scheme as to pleasant things that might happen to us, but be glad in all good that might come, and that we should learn to dwell firmly in the peace of God what- ever might befall us. And again she would warn us against overstrain and worry in our proper work, pointing to the examples of men occupied in great affairs of State, who still had observed their hours of prayer and meditation." I860.] LIFE AT LALEHAM. 89 Miss Barrett writes : ".I wish I could at all adequately express in words all that belonged to that life at Laleham, the wide and beautiful world of thought into which we were led, the fine way in which the intellectual life was de- veloped and cultivated, the atmosphere of deep moral earnestness, the high, strong, pure, in- tensely living religious conceptions that were taught. It is difficult, indeed, by any descrip- tion, to represent the powerful influence of her teaching in the daily morning Bible-lessons and the Saturday afternoon talks. There were times when I remember to have seen the most careless and thoughtless moved and touched by her appeal. She taught us in a way that made religion appear to us not only as something very beautiful, very wide, very high, but also as the one great reality that entered into every part of our life. . . . But there was nothing strained, nor was there ever in her teaching anything cramped or non-human, or touched with the phrasing and limitations of any particular school of religious thought." Miss Pipe still taught several of the general classes, as composition, analysis, poetry, history, and botany, and she had an extra class on one evening in the week for a few girls who went through Whately's ' Lessons on Reasoning ' with her. Her staff of visiting teachers was increased, but she attended every lesson given, and took notes of most lectures. Dr Gottfried Kinkel, a German exile, who had taken a leading part in 90 LALEHAM. [CH. in. the constitutional rising in Prussia which followed the troubles of 1848, had been imprisoned, and through his wife's ingenuity and courage had escaped to England, was an acquisition on whom she specially congratulated her girls and herself. His lectures on physical geography were not only eloquent and stimulating to a remark- able degree, they were also full, accurate, and based both on the science of that time and on all that travellers had observed and recorded of the climate, physical features, natural history, and phenomena belonging to the lands they had visited. The subject was barely out of its in- fancy, but such men as Dr Kinkel contributed to its fascination and its study. Miss Pipe hardly considered the dry details of separate countries, their provinces, counties, towns, and manufactures, as belonging to a girl's first edu- cation. These were to be studied as occasion rose, and very specially and closely in connection with history, to which they belong. It was nature's world that she wished them to know first, before they studied nature's effect on human- ity, out of which arose the conditions which developed national types and achievements. Be- sides these lectures, for which the classes were carefully prepared, and which were supplemented by readings from books of travel, Dr Kinkel taught the more advanced pupils German for some years, and laid a broad foundation for the keen interest taken in the history, literature, and DR GOTTFRIED KINKEL. I860.] GREAT TEACHERS. 91 music of that country, at Laleham, an interest which, as we shall see, the most famous of his successors inherited and deepened. In every way this vivid teacher quickened the intellectual life of both schoolmistress and pupils. One of the latter, Miss Gibson, recalls his work and personality in a picturesque reminiscence : " Dr Gottfried Kinkel, the brilliant German exile, professor and poet, taught us much besides geo- graphy in its ordinary sense ; and I have some- times thought that it showed a considerable amount of courage, as well as a liberal mind, to invite such a splendid embodiment of the revolu- tionary spirit six feet of vigorous manhood, with dark eyes and prematurely whitened hair to lecture with a poet's tongue to a roomful of girls fresh from middle -class Puritan homes. I seem to see him very plainly, standing beside Miss Pipe with the red ribbon in his button- hole." Mr George MacDonald still came for an oc- casional series of lectures, and sometimes Mr Huggins now Sir William Huggins, K.C.B., and our most distinguished astronomer would give the girls a talk about the starry heavens or about electricity, a subject just then raising amongst scientific men much tumult of discussion and speculative opinion. There is a tradition that he invited his class to come to his laboratory and to receive a shock from one of the electric engines, and that Miss Pipe took eight of her 92 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. elder girls to benefit by the practical illustration. Mr Huggins was anxious to make the shock as gentle as possible, but the whole party was so startled that its members fell in a heap on the floor, and between distress and laughter, the experimentalist was unable to help them up. Dr Hodgson, whenever he was for any time resident in London, would come for a lecture on economics, on logic, or on the laws of health, but these were not part of the curriculum, and were only welcomed as an intermittent stimulus. But his advice was always at Miss Pipe's ser- vice, and she availed herself of it largely, in the matter of books, teachers, and practical suggestions. Mrs Savery has preserved a charming remin- iscence of her teaching of logic. " A few of us older girls had a delightful hour once a- week with her in the library. It was preceded by tea, at which Mrs Pipe was also present, and was speci- ally charming and kind to us all. Afterwards we went through Whately's ' Lessons on Reasoning ' with Miss Pipe, making an analysis of each chapter. I well remember that once or twice Miss Pipe did not think she quite grasped the meaning of a particular sentence, and after asking us if we did, she said with such pretty humility, ' It is not fair for me to keep you all waiting. I will study it when I am alone.' " Her personal methods of governing and influ- encing demand a chapter to themselves, and shall 1861.] MISS CHAMBERS. 93 shortly be treated of more fully, so for the present I shall return to what may be called the chrono- logical biography. It was soon after her settlement at Laleham that Miss Pipe made the acquaintance of Janet Chambers, a daughter of Dr Robert Chambers, who had shortly before left Edinburgh for London. He and his family were on terms of warm friend- ship with Dr Hodgson, who realised Miss Pipe's need of a friend belonging to a larger world, and brought Miss Chambers to Laleham. Those who may still remember this beautiful and gifted woman, so conscious of duty to others in many ways besides the defined services and courtesies of personal intercourse, can perhaps visualise their memory of a tall, stately, golden - haired girl, graceful and gracious, carrying about her an aura of happiness for others, of tranquillity, under- standing, and gentle radiance. She was then a few years younger than Miss Pipe, but looked older, perhaps, on account of her bearing and social experience. The introduction proved to be of two friends made for each other, rather than of two mere acquaintances. Alas ! this friendship had but three years to run on earth, but it satis- fied a great lack in Miss Pipe's life, and endorsed her sense of the nobility and helpfulness to be found in the world outside her own sectarian confines. Miss Chambers, before she left Edin- burgh, had been doing much work in the slums of the Water of Leith, and had endeavoured to rouse 94 LALEHAM. [CH. in. their ignorant tenants to the immense value of knowledge concerning health and its requisites. She had classes of the poorest mothers and their daughters, and taught them the elements of her subject with simple demonstrations and axioms, and she had reason to hope that the gospel of cleanliness and fresh air was becoming familiar to them. Already she had gathered together a class of poor London girls in whom she was interested, and whom she taught in the same way. When Miss Pipe heard of her work, she begged her to give some of those simple lessons at Laleham. She had been looking about for a lady to take up the subject, but it was so new to the "general" that she had failed to find one sufficiently in- structed. Miss Chambers consented, and began her course of lessons in the autumn term of 1861. In a letter written shortly before the holidays were over, she says : " Good friend, you must really give up your misgivings on my account. I am only too happy to have such an opportunity for doing something in what would otherwise be my useless existence. I am conning over my opening address to your girls, a little every day, and when I have it written out, I should like to read it over to you, before reading it to them, to see if you think it will do. There are some general ideas which I must give them at starting, to awaken a generous and liberal feeling towards the details which will follow. I shall be very happy if the Miss Corde- 1861.] LETTER FROM MRS PIPE. 95 roys join the class, but I am afraid I can teach them nothing. I am only fit for either young, intelligent girls, or utter and hopeless ignorance." Much of that summer holiday was spent by Mrs and Miss Pipe at Brighton, but towards its close Miss Pipe went back to Laleham to prepare for the new term. She received a letter there from her mother, the only one which has survived from their correspondence. It is so charming, and so illustrative of Mrs Pipe's bright, affectionate nature, that I venture to quote it : MY DEAR LOVE, " All alone, yet not alone." A thou- sand thanks for your unexpected but welcome letter. It is really full of interesting things, upon which I will not comment, because I wish to lay aside my pen as soon as possible. I have been walking and sitting on the Chain Pier most of the day, and then catering for my own dear self now that I have lost Miss Crowther, who did every- thing for me. Miss Elliot has favoured me with a visit. She is a good Jewyn Street Wesleyan, delighted with Mr Jackson and Mr Lightwood, but not so much pleased with Mr Lomas, does not think his sermons suitable for young people ! hear, hear. Bless dear Mr Barrett, and everybody else, who in any way helpeth or comforteth you, sweet love. How like you the cook and her cooking ? I am tired of writing : good-night, dearest ; perhaps I may add a line on Monday. See that you do not burn this beautiful letter, it would be barbarous : rather get it framed ! Monday. Please thank Miss Crowther for her note and its enclosure. I went to Mr Vaughan's church yesterday morning, and walked to Kemptown Parade after dinner. My old teeth and my new ones have been quarrelling a little. Give my love to Miss Calvert, Mademoiselle, and to all the girls I know. And now, sweet love, let me beg 96 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. and pray of you not to be anxious about me or any one thing in the world. I have more hope for myself, and feel in better spirits. God bless you, dearest, and grant you all the wisdom, grace, and strength you need. YOUR LOVING MOTHER. The term began with twenty -six pupils. Nicholls, the faithful and efficient housekeeper of many years, arrived at its beginning to relieve Mrs Pipe of increasing cares : Anne was still their devoted maid, and the younger servants were under her superintendence. In the garden old Wiltshire ruled, but somewhat slackly, and rigidly old-fashioned in his methods. Some word-pictures of Miss Pipe, revealing different facets of her administration, have reached me from pupils of 1861. The first is by Miss Levick, who, when her years at Laleham were completed, found herself face to face with the unexpected problem of her future, and who bravely began one of the many schools which perpetuated the traditions and influence of Miss Pipe's methods, and which she used affection- ately to call her " colonies." Miss Levick writes : " My first impressions of Miss Pipe were those of fear mingled with reverent admiration, and these were more or less maintained throughout my school-days. She struck me as hard and unsym- pathetic. I felt in her presence much like a snail that dares not put out its head, so that I then missed the closer friendship and companionship that might have been mine. i86i.] MISS LEVICK'S RECOLLECTIONS. 97 " The Ideal, which she unceasingly set before us, was well engraven upon our minds, and it was indeed our own fault if, after we left school, we did not strive to make it our Real. Her favourite character - pictures were taught us in Solomon's ' Virtuous Woman ' and Wordsworth's ' Perfect Woman,' both of which we had to paraphrase under her severe but most interesting criticism. She ruled as a queen : her word was law : her look was an all - sufficient rebuke. Her personality was dovetailed into our studies, our leisure, our motives, our aspirations. As I look back upon those happy Laleham days, I realise what a splen- did foundation she laid for the superstructure of a hard and difficult life, and how without her severe lessons of self-control the years would have been a sad failure. There has ever been a con- sciousness of her inspiring influence and reliance upon her example for organisation and the training of others in this her ' daughter school.' Never shall I forget one of the first Bible- classes I attended, when she depicted the love of our Heavenly Father, taking as the basis of her lesson the words, ' I must be about my Father's business.' I was a child about twelve years old, with tears of home sickness very near the surface, and her words appealed to me with heart - stirring power. I knew that Sunday afternoon that God was not a far-off Deity, but a close embodiment of love. Rushing up to my room when the hour ended, and looking over the pretty, sheltered garden, I held G 98 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. communion with Him who has ever guarded and guided my soul/' Miss Gibson writes : "I went to Laleham in 1861, when Miss Pipe was about thirty, and her slender figure with the delicate grave face, crowned with pale red hair, is very fresh in my memory, as well as her deep voice." Mrs Frank's recollections of this year and the next supplement those just quoted. She was one of Mr Corderoy's daughters, sent as soon as she was old enough to his friend's school. " It was my great privilege," she tells us, "to be admitted to Laleham at a time when Miss Pipe undertook most of the English teaching her- self, when there were not so many girls as in later days, and when Mrs Pipe mothered us all in her sweet way, now and then administering a gentle rebuke. I was then one of the younger ones, but met with much kindness from those older than myself both in years and knowledge, and when I became an ' old girl ' I was commissioned to look after and befriend new girls during their first term. I well remember my first morning at Laleham, for I spent part of it with Miss Pipe in her library, making out the time-table which was to regulate my work through the term. I owe my love of botany to her, and always looked forward to this class, and when, on two occasions, Mrs and Miss Pipe joined our family circle in the summer holiday, once in South Cornwall and once at Cromer, we had delightful rambles in search of new flowers and ferns. I think it was in 1862 1861.] TIME-TABLES. 99 that the ' Greenwood Treaty ' was drawn up. A few of us were sitting one day in the summer- house at the end of the long walk, and talking of the future, wondering what it held in store for us, when some one suggested that we should all meet, if possible, that day ten years, and that in the meantime there should be an interchange of letters every year. The ' Treaty ' was signed by about fifteen girls, and when the day came, those of us who were within reasonable distance met at Mrs Hoole's house in Russell Square, where we were most hospitably entertained and revived many memories of our years at school ; then we all went by special invitation to Laleham, where we spent a delightful evening with dear Miss Pipe." In 1861 Miss Pipe made all the time -tables herself, and in some of her older commonplace books there are skeleton drafts of these important and formidable documents, whose intricate manu- facture occupied the first fortnight of every term. Every hour and every half hour were entered for each day in the week, and for each girl, and each girl's personal time-table was separately made. After a few years this task was handed over to the head English governess, and much tearing of hair and growling over the unreliable ways of visiting teachers generally distinguished its slow completion, delayed by courteous notes from emi- nent professors, which intimated an unavoidable and infinitesimal change of hour in their arrival. 100 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. Professor Sterndale Bennett gave the more advanced music-lessons, and was assisted by Mrs Taylor, his pupil, who was both an accomplished musician and fond of teaching. She was a harpist as well as a pianist, and for a few years taught the harp also. In time this old-fashioned instrument gave way to the violin. Some first letters from Miss Pipe to the parents of her pupils indicate minor details, which supply touches in the memorial picture of Laleham. " Let me thank you," she wrote to one, " for your willing- ness to consult my wishes as to dress. I have none to express, however, that would not be in keeping, I am sure, with your own taste and judgment. We do not adopt a uniform, and my only desire is that the young ladies should dress simply and quietly, with no flowers outside their bonnets, no heavy jewellery, rich laces, elaborate trimmings, or other troublesome and showy things unsuitable to the busy, simple life of girls at school." Already she was in correspondence with many girls who had left her school and all-embracing care. Letters of this year are witness to her pursuing tenderness and guidance. She was twenty-nine years old when she wrote as follows to a pupil who was in after years to become one of her most cherished friends : " Practise yourself in perseverance. Make up your mind deliberately to some purpose, and then steadily, tenaciously, in spite of all hindrances and discouragements, carry 1861.] PERSEVERANCE. 101 it out. Every such effort made successfully will give you confidence and help you to other achieve- ments. It often happens that people naturally deficient in some one quality become eminent for it. They are aware of the weak point and bend all other efforts to strengthen it, until they are conquerors and even more than conquerors. The impetuous and self-confident Moses becomes memor- able for meekness ; the fiery and revengeful John for gentleness. And so you, by patient, hopeful self-discipline will probably come to be firm and persevering. And bear in mind that every effort which you make now, in youth, is a seed, seem- ingly small and worthless ; but it will bear fruit hereafter. The results of every thought, motive, effort in youth are wonderful. There is nothing like it in after-life. Take no holiday at present. Bear resolutely, earnestly on up the hill Difficulty. Do not turn aside to rest and sleep in pleasant arbours by the way. Be severe with yourself. This is your sowing-time. If you spend it wisely you shall not have * to beg in harvest.' ' : And to the same girl she wrote a few months later : "I write to wish you many happy returns of your birthday, and to offer you my earnest and affectionate congratulations on the twenty-first. ' Like the swell of some sweet time Morning rises into noon, May glides onward into June.' The joys and sorrows of life are henceforth deeper for you than heretofore, and its duties make larger 102 LALEHAM. [CH. ill. and more serious demands upon your thought and feeling. The God of your youth go with you through all the unseen years to come, delivering you in time of tribulation from despair ; in time of wealth from all forgetfulness of Him, from being satisfied without His favour, which is better than life" 1862.] 103 CHAPTER IV. YEARS OF INCREASE. (1862-1865.) LALEHAM was now established a "city set upon a hill." Its light went out into a larger world than before, attracted attention, awoke interest. Twenty-five girls assembled for the first term of 1862, some of them daughters of enlightened members of the Church of England. The house could not hold more then, and Miss Pipe con- templated reducing rather than increasing that number. Some years later workmen, making an additional bath-room, had to break through a wall, and came unexpectedly on a large space comprising three rooms, hitherto unsuspected, probably walled - up by the first owner, and these rooms were utilised for another bath-room, a box-room, and an additional bedroom, so that the number of girls was increased rather than diminished. It was in fact impossible for Miss Pipe to reduce it. Laleham was the first of the greater schools for girls, and those parents who 104 YEARS OF INCREASE. [OH. IV. could appreciate what that meant were too anxi- ous to secure its advantages for their daughters to fail for want of eager and persistent entreaty. Such parents as were not Wesleyan readily con- sented to Miss Pipe's rule that all her girls should go to the Brixton Chapel. The majority were Wesleyans. On Sundays she made a point of being with them as much as possible, morning, afternoon, and evening; she walked with them to chapel and returned with them ; in the after- noon she held a Bible- class, one of her most im- portant means of personal spiritual influence ; after the Bible-class all went to the music-room and sang hymns, in parts or singly, until the tea-bell rang. A certain number of the girls had tea with Mrs and Miss Pipe on that day, and after tea all, except those who were invalided, went again to chapel. There was no spirit of proselyt- ism in this. She detested proselytism, and loved the Church of England as much as her own, but she honoured the Church in which she was brought up, and especially desired to be useful to the children of its members. She used to say : "I should just as deeply regret proselytism from the English to the Methodist Church, as I should regret proselytism from the Methodist to the English Church." In a letter to Mrs Levick she explained her point of view : " We are, as you have understood, Wesleyans. Most of my pupils are Wesleyans likewise, but some belong to the Church. They 1862.] LETTERS TO MOTHERS. 105 have all alike gone with us to chapel, however, although we have, close by, in the Park, a very excellent and able evangelical clergyman. We have attended occasional services at his church, and he is kindly willing to prepare for confirmation any of my girls who may desire it. As Wesleyans we are in full sympathy with the Church of England, differing, as you are no doubt aware, not in doctrine, but on immaterial points of church government. I should therefore be most happy to send part of my girls to church were it not that I prefer to keep them all on Sunday under my own personal care, which would be impracticable if we attended two places of worship." Another letter, written in 1862 to the mother of a girl brought up in the Church of England, goes into the question with still greater earnestness. This lady's daugh- ter desired to receive the Holy Communion along with Miss Pipe and the majority of her school- fellows. The matter was laid before her mother thus : " Your daughter has expressed a wish to receive with us the Holy Communion, provided that her wish meet your approval. You will, during the holidays, have opportunities of conver- sation with her, and observation of her conduct while free and unrestrained at home, after which you may be able to acquaint me with your opinion as to the propriety of acceding to her request. I have myself no reason to offer which should set it aside. She is very obedient, diligent, earnest, and amiable. Her conduct is altogether irreproachable, 106 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. IV. and everybody takes pleasure in her. There is nothing in her outward life inconsistent with the profession of a desire to rule herself by Christian principles. I believe many clergymen of the established Church agree with Dr Arnold in invit- ing young people who are religiously disposed to communicate even before confirmation. And I hope that the differences of ecclesiastical form, which distinguish our denomination from the parent Church, would not in any way affect my young friend, or cause her to be hereafter a less zealous and loyal Churchwornan. That her mind should be controlled and elevated by the highest motives which our holy religion can afford, I have earnestly at heart : to make her a Wesleyan Methodist would give me no satisfaction whatever. After you have considered and decided the ques- tion, I shall be glad of a few lines from you." Miss Chambers was giving a weekly lesson on the structure and organs of the body and their care. In a letter to Miss Healey (afterwards Mrs Capper), Miss Pipe wrote: "The chief school news is that a course of lessons on the Laws of Health is being given here by a charming young woman of genius, beautiful, clever, and good, Miss Janet Chambers. I wish you could hear them. This is a subject which you must take up by-and- by. Dining at her father's the other day, I met, among other interesting people, Mr Charles Knight, a most amiable, quick, and cheerful old gentleman. He is trying to get Shakespeare's house turned 1862.] LETTER FROM MISS CHAMBERS. 107 into a sort of Shakespearian Museum." Unhappily Miss Chambers was in such delicate health that the doctors forbade her finishing the course, and ordered her to Cannes. Before leaving she wrote to Miss Pipe : THOU DEAR SISTER, My last grief is that I am for- bidden to give another lesson at Laleham. I had hoped to have given the most interesting and poetical of all the Circu- lation next Wednesday. On Saturday I would like to come and sit an hour with you, if convenient, as I expect to leave next week. How deeply I feel your affection and sympathy it is vain to express or try to express except by eloquent silence. But one thing I must tell you is how much I love you, and how much I respect you. You have done me much good, and I am grateful for your friendship, and for the moments of highest, noblest exaltation since I left the dear old sphere in Scotland; I also lay at your feet my thanks. A grateful, peaceful memory of you will go with me abroad, and if our personal communion is indeed near its close, perhaps in the spirit-life our mutual influence may interblend, and living, actual fruit yet spring forth from out of our endeavours however feebly to realise God's best Truths in daily life. Perhaps, dear, our conversations may be of some good : interchange of ideas between two minds differently affected from without is always valuable, as the better showing us our parts and the length of our mental tether. The usefulness of your life, the sense of your responsibilities, and the calm, strong spirit with which you meet its various joys and sorrows, have always called forth my greatest admiration and reverence. That God may love and bless you and your kind, good mother is the most fervent prayer of your sister-friend, JANET CHAMBERS. Only two more of her letters survive from their correspondence, one from Cannes, and a last from Verulam, Miss Chambers's London home, whither 108 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. IV. she came next summer, to live only a few months longer, but in that short time to watch by her mother's deathbed in September 1863. Her own death followed on October 30 of the same year. So ended on earth a friendship which had gladdened and strengthened Miss Pipe more than any yet experienced. She was wont to say of Janet Chambers, " There are sane minds and insane ; so there are people morally sane or insane. I believe there is a still higher conduct degree, and that Janet Chambers was a genius in matters affecting morals : she knew intuitively just the delicate differences in conduct which different circum- stances required." Early in 1862 Miss Pipe began to suffer from prostrating headaches, the unavoidable result of these crowded and strenuous years. She was laid aside for part of the Easter holiday, but revived to welcome her friends, Mr Corderoy and his daughters, who stayed at Laleham for some weeks while painters and paperers were in possession of their own house. Then was planned a summer holiday to- gether in Cornwall, and this was happily carried out. In a letter to Miss Healey, dated September 8, Miss Pipe gives some bright details : " We enjoyed very much our rambles about the Land's End and the Scilly Isles. We were on the water a great part of nearly every day, steaming east and west, or sailing about the bay and landing at the caves and coves beyond it, Mousehole with its exquisite ceiling of lady-fern and sea - spleenwort, Porth- 1862.] PENZANCE AND NEW FOREST. 109 Curno, and so on. We fished and botanised and junketed and saw the proper sights, and made the proper excursions, and enjoyed ourselves very much. The Corderoy girls and boys went down into the depths of Botablach, and brought back wonderful stories, as behoved travellers into such regions ; but I was proof against its attractions, and spent the afternoon upon the water." From Penzance Mrs and Miss Pipe went to the New Forest, and stayed a fortnight in a cottage at Lyndhurst, a double change and rest which brought her recovery and recruiting. " We have come hither," she wrote, " for perfect rest and the quietness and beauty of these woods. We sit under the trees and lean against their mossy roots, listening to all the low, sweet woodland sounds, bees humming over the heather, beetles that ' praise the Lord by rubbing their legs together/ here and there a bird singing ' the vespers of another year/ and multitudinous beechen leaves talking in a low voice overhead. It is heaven to be so still ! I find myself wonderfully soothed, refreshed, and strengthened by friends and rest, and am looking to the 17th with the old eagerness for work. I have got a governess at length. It is a lady whom Dr Kinkel calls ' the pearl of Bedford Square/ a place he considers the best institution in present existence for female education, so I hope to be well seconded." This lady, Miss Smith, now Mrs Fisher, gives us the following most interesting account of her intro- duction to Laleham and its staff: "My friend, 110 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. IV. Mrs Macdonald, was a visiting teacher at Laleham. The teaching of mathematics to girls was just beginning, and she gave the lessons there. But her husband receiving his appointment at Oxford, she had to give up her lessons. Miss Pipe, Dr Kinkel, and Mrs Macdonald held a consultation on the subject of getting some one to take her place, at which Dr Kinkel turned to Mrs Macdonald and asked, 'What has become of that little red-haired girl who used to sit next you in my class at Bed- ford College ? ' I was then in Germany, but after some exchange of letters I went to Laleham in the autumn. Miss Pipe was then just over thirty and I was nineteen, but she looked old for her years. She was in bad health, overworked, thin, and very nervous. The school was in a most prosperous condition financially, and she felt the necessity of having more help. She taught many subjects herself, but not arithmetic or mathematics ; but she knew how to get round her a set of first-rate teachers, Dr Kinkel, Dr Hodgson, George Mac- Donald, Fraulein Heinrich, Madame Ferrari, Stern- dale Bennett. Dr Kinkel had been in prison and condemned to death, but he escaped through the ingenuity of his wife and Fraulein Heinrich. They sent him a piece of music in his bread, which con- tained in the notation a message that these two would be at the foot of his prison on a certain night with ropes. He was wearing hand-knitted stockings, and he unravelled them, tied pieces of bread as weights to the wool, and let it down to 1862.] MRS FISHER'S RECOLLECTIONS. Ill his wife who was waiting below, who first sent up stronger cord, then files and ropes, and so he escaped. He went to England, and for many years could not have returned to Germany without risk of his life ; and when permission was granted, he refused to leave Switzerland, where he spent his last years. It is difficult to give a clear account of my time at Laleham ; many changes were taking place, Miss Pipe availing herself of every new light on education. Dear old Nicholls and Anne were the chief servants. I think it was in 1863 that the hall, study, and dining-rooms were re-carpeted with soft Axminster carpets, and I remember when Mr Cock came to examine some arithmetic classes in the following summer, Miss Pipe preceded him downstairs to the dining-room, where the girls were gathered. She opened the door and waited for him to pass in, when he bobbed down in front of her, exclaiming, ' Good gracious ! real Ax- minster ! ' and very nearly caused Miss Pipe to tumble over him. Miss Calvert and Mademoiselle Golay were there in my time, and Friiulein Heinrich was also resident. Often when Miss Pipe was suffering from headache, Fraulein Heinrich or I, or both of us together, would be asked to play in the music- room with the door open, as her bedroom was close at hand. We used to play Beethoven's Symphonies arranged as duets, and Miss Pipe's favourite was No. 1. Mrs Pipe was a dear old lady, but hedged her daughter round with observ- ances, and we sometimes felt it to be a grievance 112 YEARS OF INCREASE. [OH. IV. that we could not freely approach her. It shows Miss Pipe's real greatness of character that she was able to grow out of and above this high hedge, and eventually to cut it down altogether. Professor Huggins used to come and lecture to us now and then on the Sun, I remember. I left in 1866 for my marriage ; but ever after, and all along, she was our true friend, helping us in all sorts of ways. Dr Kinkel helped me much. I had a geography class which was a kind of preparatory class to his, and I always discussed my scheme of work for the coming term with him, and he gave me most valuable advice. It was my work to make the terrible time-tables at the beginning of the term. Mad- emoiselle Golay, a woman of sterling character, was the French governess. We divided the * walk ' between us, and I remember my dislike of it, especially on wet days, when an hour had to be spent in the gymnasium instead. I had always danced, and did not realise that dancing was anathema to the parents of many of the girls ; so one wet day I started to teach them dancing during that terrible hour, I thought it would be better for them than dawdling or strolling about. I soon taught them, and of course the girls thoroughly enjoyed it. One day I was playing a polka for them, and Miss Pipe came to the door and stood watching them for some time. She nodded to me, said nothing, and quietly vanished without having been noticed by the girls. Later, an injudicious person tried to make mischief about 1863.] LETTER TO MISS HEALEY. 113 the dancing, but I stuck to my guns, and was able to say that Miss Pipe knew all about it. One always felt that she wanted the best for the girls from every point of view, and as she never spared herself, we never shirked our work. I went to Lale- ham with love and enthusiasm for my work, but cer- tainly from the intellectual side chiefly ; she showed me how much more important the training of character was, and how we could help that in our work. Most of her girls at that time came from homes where money abounded, but no culture ; and her great aim was to fit those girls for their future life in the world, so that they should be of value somehow, somewhere. Her health was very bad at that time, and she was not in a condition to take much interest in public questions. The war between the Northern and Southern States of America was raging, and party feeling ran high, and we thought she avoided the subject. In later years she took more interest in public questions." Two letters to Miss Healey from Miss Pipe in 1863 supplement some of these most interesting reminiscences. Thus, in spring, she wrote : "As to myself, I am getting on prosperously. I never set to work in better heart than at the beginning of this term, and I was complimented on all hands upon my improved looks ; but after a few days I was suddenly attacked by a fierce indisposition, which took me by surprise and whisked me off to the very edge of the world, and bade me look over down into the dark. I was soon out of danger, H 114 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. however, but not so soon restored to vigour. Four days and nights of something like sea -sickness exhausted me. Mr Ward, dear old gentleman, was puzzled, but called in his clever son, who set me right. I went down to Tunbridge Wells to the junior Lidgetts for a few days until I was fit, and then came back again with red face and firm step to the confusion of everybody who had said I was dead and buried ! I have a German and musical governess, a very interesting creature (Fraulein Heinrich), an excellent English gover- ness (Miss Smith), Mademoiselle Golay, and good little Annie Calvert as helps, and I myself do less than of yore in class-work, though fully as much or more in the way of intercourse with the girls individually, and by constant direction and ex- amination I hope to accomplish more than it was ever possible to do with my own hand." That spring Mrs and Miss Pipe went to the Channel Islands, and in the autumn to Fresh- water, within a walk of Tennyson's home in the Isle of Wight. " We are staying at a farmhouse, where we get transcendent eggs, butter, cream, new milk, brown bread, and capons, and listen to a perpetual chorus of sheep, kine, excited pigs, dogs, clucking hens, and forty gobbling turkeys. We are within three or four minutes' walk of the sea, wherein I bathe ; which we visit before breakfast and by moonlight ; whereby we walk and meditate at all hours of the day. " Slatts woods, Dr Arnold's birthplace, is within 1863.] CRITICISM OF ' ROMOLA.' 115 a drive. Alum Bay and the Needles are at the distance of a glorious walk, the finest I know except at Lynton. We go sometimes to a pleasant little rustic hotel there and return after- wards by the cliffs. Tis a pleasant life. . . . On the way home I shall probably spend one night at Tunbridge Wells, at Dr Hodgson's. He and his young wife are living there until September, when they will, I trust, remove to London. It is indirectly through an odd circum- stance that we are able to take your sister Adela just now. So many of the girls took to the water last term, that I determined to have a new bath built, and the workmen, in boring for water- pipes, bored into a new room, or rather three new rooms ! " To the same correspondent was written the following criticism of George Eliot's ' Romola ' : " * Romola ' I have tried to get through. It is wonderfully clever, and the lesson taught is perhaps good, and yet I am not sure of this. I fear people might find in Tito on the one hand and Romola on the other, a confirmation of the theory that people are born good or bad and must of necessity live after their nature. But this may arise from the circumstance that she does not begin at the beginning. When Tito first comes before us, he is already capable of so base and fiendish an ingratitude that I put the book down in disgust and said, Here is no room for development of character ; the fellow is as bad 116 YEAKS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. as he can be to begin with. Having promised to read it, however, I went at it again, and am glad I did, for it is exquisitely written, subtle in humour, profound in thought, perfect in that fine thing proportion, or, as Wordsworth calls it, measure. The command which the writer has over her feelings and imagination amazes me. She is helped in this, no doubt, by her fine taste and keen sense of the ludicrous. But all her books are such as a disciple of Socrates might have written. Even in her delineations of Christian character, there is a heathenish absence of Christian forces. Especially, she never loses an opportunity of showing you that she believes prayer to be merely one among the many equal activities of the human mind, having no relation to a supernal order of things. You will answer that it is not a novelist's business to teach religion. But she should either avoid the subject altogether, or treat it truly. . . . Part of the first volume of Edward Irving's ' Life ' I read some time ago. We must not take too much to heart the aberrations of men like Irving, Newman, the great Pascal, Calvin, and others. I think if you notice you will find that these sincere and devout men are never suffered to go wrong in essential things, in truths of life and practice, I mean. It is in scientific theology that they get wrong, and in science, whether theological or secular, infallible guidance is not promised us. They make blunders which cause 1864.] LALEHAM PUPILS. 117 themselves and others much suffering, but why not? So long as they are kept humble, pure, and holy, the rest does not signify so much. All will come right hereafter. There is eternity before them wherein to learn. A rest remaineth, an intellectual rest. Think of that, my Lillie ; is it not good to hope for?" Such letters were written to all those of her girls who valued them after they left school. Perhaps her earliest pupils at Laleham Lodge and Laleham were those who got nearest her heart, for she was personally so occupied with them, that something of her very spirit entered them and shone with steady radiance in their morning of life. To her they confided their perplexities and opened their hearts. From her they sought counsel in the disposal of their time, in the doing of difficult duties, in the choice of books, and above all, in the ebb and flow of their spiritual life. She spoke of them long afterwards as a company of girls never to be forgotten, and never afterwards equalled at Laleham. A letter to Miss Gibson, written at New Year 1864, illustrates her continuous help : "I am by no means sur- prised to hear of your difficulty in finding time to read, nor can I say that I much deplore it, so long as you are well enough employed and are doing your work in the right spirit. Read- ing is not an end, but a means to an end. In so far as it tends to correct frivolity, anxiety, and worldliness, to animate and fortify us with 118 YEABS OF INCREASE. [CH. IV. true, wide, and noble views of life, character, and conduct, it is a great benefit ; but a little care- fully read, and pondered earnestly, with humility and a sincere desire to learn, may serve all these highest purposes. I would advise you to get some single play of Shakespeare's, say, 'The Merchant of Venice ' or * Macbeth,' in Chambers's new edition, and read it over and over, and study it patiently, until it is your own. After a time get another. Have you seen Mr Charles Knight's * Autobiography ' ? and made acquaintance with ' Pet Marjorie ' ? A little fiction of the satirical rather than the sentimental sort has its uses. To get laughed out of one's shams and weaknesses is a wholesome thing, and I know some excellent good people who would be all the better for a dose of Thackeray now and then, though they would shake their heads over me as a reprobate, or at best a very dubious person, if they heard me say so. You should read Stanley's ' Memorials of Canterbury/ by the way. I took up English history last term, Dr Kinkel keeping pace with me in art, and Mr MacDonald in literature. His readings in Chaucer were excellent, every line worth pages of history. In the evenings we read Stanley of the present, Froissart of the past, and many other books illustrating Plantagenet times. A course of this kind would be good for you at home, but it might require too much time. I think you have a copy of Sir James Stephen's lecture on ' Systematic and Desultory Reading ' ? " 1864.] COUNSEL, 119 -s m i Another letter to one of these old pupils, full of profound ethical and spiritual counsel, belongs to 1864: "Do thy work, and leave sorrow ancT^ joy to come of themselves. Do not limit the work to the outward activities of life. By work I mean not these only, though these certainly, but also the regulation of our moral feelings, strive against pride, vanity, ostentation, self- righteousness, self-satisfaction and dissatisfaction, resentment, impatience, alienation, discontent, indolence, peevishness, hatred or dislike, in- constancy, cowardice, untiring, hopeful effort after obedience to the willof^God, and resolute, - believing war with every temper contrary to the mind of Christ. It can be done, and it must be done. It is promised : it is commanded : it is possible. If you wish for something that you may not lawfully grasp, or cannot grasp, begin to fight, and never leave off until the wish is mastered and annihilated as completely as if it had never been once felt. This must be done not by desperate struggling so much as by calm, resolved, fixed faith. Do thus thy work, and leave sorrow and joy to come of themselves. . . . You see to obedience, faith, and righteousness. God will give you peace and joy in such measure as He pleases, and in increasing measure as the years go by. Until I was five or six and twenty, I think I had no peace or joy at all. Indeed, I never found any unTil I had given up caring for, praying for, hoping for, or in any way seek- 120 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. ing after comfort and feeling. I took up with just an historical faith in the Bible and said : He will not make me glad, but He shall not find me, therefore, swerve from following Him. I will do His holy will so far as I can, I will serve Him as well as I can, though not perhaps so well as others to whom the joy of the Lord gives strength. I will be content to do without these inward rewards, but with or without such wages I will do my best work for the Master. With this resolve, arrived at after years of weary strife, rest began for me, and deepened afterwards into peace, and heightened eventually into joy, and now from year to year, almost from week to week, an ever greatening blessedness." Miss Pipe never confounded religion with emotional excitement. For her it was a stern combat, an arduous pilgrimage, in which one learned ever to fight better, ever to walk more warily and more resolutely, clad in the armour of God, girt and alert. There was no senti- mentality in her spirituality. She knew the weakening effects of emotionalism, its tendency to relax discipline, the rank growths which it fosters, its spiritual pride and acrimony, its blatant and facile profession. To be what God had planned for her, made spiritually anew in His likeness, not neurotically in the semblance of His likeness, was her unresting aim. To the end her character radiated this likeness. Another glimpse into the Laleham of those V MISS PIPE. 1864.] MRS BROADBENT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 121 years is given to us by Mrs Broadbent (Miss Keighley), who writes : "I went to Laleham in September 1864, soon after my fourteenth birth- day. I remember Miss Smith, who took arith- metic : she was a clear, painstaking teacher, and I made progress with her and regretted her leaving to be married. I was put into the second class in grammar, which Miss Pipe took, and I remember how clearly she taught, and how I felt able to follow the lessons and get on with her, and how I wished that she taught every class I was in. I was also in her history class ; and that too she made most real, most interest- ing. She preferred not to cover much ground, but to make clear and do thoroughly what she did teach. This suited me exactly. Botany she taught us, not in a formal class, as far as I remember, but as a recreation, out of school hours. She made that subject delightful. To me she was an ideal teacher. I had never been taught as she taught by any one before, and I have never met with any one who taught like her since. Her personality seemed to make everything she touched upon attractive. The Bible-class, her Bible-class, for there never was any other like hers ! Her presence and her teaching during that half -hour each morning affected the whole day and our whole life, and made Laleham a holy place to us." The Botany Class used to meet in the garden rather than in a class-room, and it was one of 122 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. IV. the special privileges of the summer term. Often have I seen a group of girls round her on the lawn, absorbed in her accurate exposition of a flower, or a whole family of flowers, passing round to each other the blossoms and leaves and root, each to be examined, the first to be pulled scien- tifically to pieces, that its right to a family name might be duly attested. Sometimes a summer ramble would be taken in Kent or Surrey, to gather specimens and classify them ; and it was Miss Pipe's habit, whenever she received a rare specimen from a friend, to bring it down to the dining-room after dinner and show it to the girls, writing its name and place on a black-board, and securing its claim to be hung on an already familiar peg in their memory. The new girls were expected to learn the names of all the trees in the garden, and to bring her a leaf from each. She was often astonished to discover how little they knew of the beautiful home trees, beech and oak, birch, fir and pine, ash, elder, willow, sycamore, mountain ash, haw- thorn, and yew. Mr Cubitt had planted the garden of Laleham with groups of trees, native and acclimatised, and the girls soon knew them all, ilexes, deodars and maples, deciduous firs, robinias, snowy mespilus, and every variety of flowering garden tree and shrub. In those days roses abounded, as well as lilacs, laburnums, flowering - currants, lilies and primroses, snow- drops, and for a few years even beautiful blue 1864.] THE "DRAWING-BOOM." 123 gentians, and the teachers and girls had leave to gather them until the gradual outreaching of London and its smoke destroyed many varieties, and made gardening more and more difficult. In later years roses almost refused to flower, and frequent replanting scarcely availed. But trees and shrubs were at home and prospered. The house was clad in creepers Virginian, ampelopsis, pyracantha, traveller's joy, a pale pink rose, hardy and lovely, jessamines yellow and white. The same care to supplement all studies was taken in the matter of books, pictures, casts, photographs. What was called a " drawing- room" was held three times a- week for an hour after supper. Miss Pipe heard songs learnt, pieces of music which Fraulein Heinrich con- sidered well practised, sometimes a duet, some- times a part song. Between these she would read to the girls some passage in book or news- paper bearing on their history, geography, liter- ature, or health lessons, often passing round engravings and photographs which illustrated the reading. The girls brought their needle- work and listened, or at intervals chatted quietly. At the end Fraulein Heinrich played an exquisite little piece, which tradition held to have been com- posed for and dedicated to her by some famous musician, and which invariably closed the even- ing. Then came the " Good-nights" to Miss Pipe, which the girls valued above all things ; the going to their rooms ; Mrs Pipe's " tucking-up " ; and a 124 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. peaceful hour for their teachers before they too retired. Of Fraulein Heinrich resident for a few years at Laleham, and afterwards for many years visit- ing teacher of music something more should be said, and it can be said in Dr Kiiikel's own words, when he introduced her to Miss Pipe : " Miss Augusta Heinrich is the daughter of a distin- guished professor at Bonn, who was the editor of ' Juvenal/ with a celebrated commentary. She studied music after her first schooling under my wife, with a first-rate musician at Breslau ; her school is the classical. She plays excellently (in concerts formerly), with more refinement than fire. As a teacher she will not easily be sur- passed, for her musical training, also theoretically, is thorough. She has been teaching at Bonn and Breslau for above sixteen years. Miss Heinrich is tall, the face soft and yet full of decision ; not beautiful, but without anything that could dis- please. She has had great sorrows, her family, except a sister, are all dead, and she has nobly fought the battle of life. She is gentle, and you will find her a lady in the full good sense of the word. She will be truthful to the last." Miss Heinrich brought into the school not only her teaching of music and German, but a fine culture and deep interest in politics and the larger questions of the day. She was a woman of sterling conscientiousness, and her work en- 1865.] LETTER FROM GEORGE MACDONALD. 125 couraged not alone the love and knowledge of music, but also the sense of duty in her pupils. Some of them thought her too strenuous, and indeed she had a heart - searching Alemannic manner which sometimes eventuated in tears on both sides ; but they loved her, and learnt to love her teaching both of music and of ethics. A letter from George MacDonald, written in August 1864 from Oban, will indicate with what deepening spiritual influence Miss Pipe was now in contact, blending with that widening intel- lectual atmosphere which men like Dr Hodgson and Dr Kinkel supplied : " You were most abun- dantly right in requesting of me what you did. And I don't think there is a phrase in your exposition of my views to which I would object. The fire of God's Love is indeed an awful one, and it will burn till the soul is made clean. Evil is the one terrible thing that God hates, and if nothing else will do He will burn it out of us, for He loves us. Can I say anything stronger? There must be a hell beyond, for there is one even here, though only occasionally does one become aware of it. Only with God Himself is there peace and safety. Death in itself can do nothing for any man. It is only as forming a part of the Eternal will and order of things, that like Hell itself it is good." Miss Pipe's nervous health was slowly giving way, and early in 1865 it was evident that the continuous strain of all kinds threatened complete 126 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. exhaustion. A letter from herself to Miss Healey gives details of her constant suffering. Its date is March 16, 1865: "I know you would like a full, true, and particular account of me, and you shall have it. I am not well. I have been ill : first an intestinal spasm ; then fomentations, ether, and a few hours' endurance of pain ; then despair and opium ; then a pleasant quiet night of utter and absolute sleeplessness ; then a day of rest and sleep to make up for the lost night. Repeat the above often enough, and you get my story of the last two or three weeks. Meanwhile my doctor, who has examined me thoroughly, says that every organ in the body is perfectly sound ; there is not even a tendency to mischief in heart, lungs, brain, or anything. But sixteen years of teaching have impaired my nervous energies, and I must either break down or get rest. Now I object to breaking down. I have, on the con- trary, a very distinct intention of going on for fifteen or twenty years longer, until I am fifty or more. So I must take the alternative of rest, but how ? How ? That is just the problem which presents itself for solution. If I can rest, the old energy will come back, and I shall be myself again ; if otherwise, not." On July 10 another letter tells of a temporary rally : " A true instinct guided you when you wrote to me, and led you to say just such things as would comfort me most. A fortnight at Wyke- ham Park did me great good. The kindness there 1865.] STRAWBERRIES. 127 I can never forget nor sufficiently acknowledge. I began to eat strawberries there, at first forced, afterwards out of the garden. Strawberries in a basket accompanied me on the journey home. Strawberries grown here awaited my arrival. With little intermission I browse on strawberries till bedtime, and even afterwards, for being aroused by a savage application to the side on lying down, I rose up again, hopeless of sleep, and got a candle, the ' Spectator,' and a basket of strawberries be- side me on the table. Thus I devoured near upon four pounds' weight of strawberries on the 17th of June. Next morning I was well, and have been, well ever since, eating four basketful of straw- berries every day, and five when I had time. Headaches, such as I had before this illness, are coming on again, proof, if proof were needed, that the mischief is nervous. While ill this year, my head has been perfectly clear and strong never a touch of headache since Christmas. I am not in a consumption, as Mr B. fancies, or falling a prey to any hereditary malady. As for my ancestors and collateral relatives, so far as their history has reached me, no two of them ever died of the same complaint, and I have had reason to give thanks for mens sana in corpore sano. But for the present I am fairly tired out. If I can get a good long holiday all will come right, I trust. It is much easier to do what has to be done now than what has had to be done in the past, and I think, if once well refreshed and thoroughly 128 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. rested, I may get on again for many years, as I fully mean to do, if able." It was settled by the doctors consulted that Miss Pipe must go abroad for some months, and be absolutely relieved during her absence of all cares connected with her school. Miss Smith was leaving at the end of the summer term ; but fortunately Miss Bolton, a lady of admirable qualities and qualifications, had been engaged in her place to come to Laleham at close of the summer holidays. Miss Pound, qualified by years and experience, consented to come as super- intendent during Mrs and Miss Pipe's absence, and for the rest, the staff of visiting and resident teachers was tried and known ; the housekeeper and servants were unchanged ; the regular order of every day was prescribed. Miss Bolton took up the secular lessons hitherto taught by Miss Pipe, and the time-tables, while Miss Pound took charge of the Bible -classes, supervision, accounts, and correspondence. " It grieves me much to leave my girls, but it will not be so very long before I am again in the midst of them, and as a better -educated person ! " So she wrote late in the term to Miss Healey, who was to go abroad with her and Mrs Pipe. They left early in August, and spent the remainder of that month, all September and part of October, in Switzerland, north and south ; then travelled down to the Italian Lakes, and by slow stages to Florence, Pisa, and Rome. Miss 1865.] TRAVELS. 129 Pipe wrote regularly to Miss Pound letters to be read aloud to the girls, and frequently to her friend Miss Edith Corderoy. Many of these letters were copied and have been preserved, and they best reveal to us just what this tour was to her, and what she gathered and stored of its gains. A few of them belong to the narrative, and are of more importance to its accuracy and interest than any sketchy resume can be. There is not space for all, although all are graphic, and those introduced are specially selected as the most autobiographic in their character. The first was written to Miss Corderoy, on August 18, 1865, from Brestenberg, . near Neuchatel : " This is a hydropathic establish- ment, frequented by German and Swiss people. Here are just one Englishman, one Russian (a prince, chamberlain to the emperor), and the family of the D'Aubignes, Monsieur le Docteur himself, the historian, his English wife, mother- in-law, niece, children, and governess. There are bathing-houses in the lake, just off the banks, and I enjoy a good plunge every morning. In the evening we have good music trios, vocal and instrumental duets. The Russian prince considers himself a good violinist, and one German girl has a lovely voice." From Brestenberg they went on to Lucerne, where they spent some delightful days, and where they saw the Emperor and Empress of France, who arrived unexpectedly at the Schweizer Hof. "Eugdnie looked very pretty; wore a silk dress, black and white plaid cloak, I 130 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. black straw hat trimmed with green leaves, and a buff parasol. She made the most graceful little bows to the Luzerner folk, who lined their way from the station to the hotel." At Lucerne they met John Gibson, the famous Sco to-Roman sculptor. " He has an interesting face. His manners are very simple ; he talks well on Art, but seems to be, like most artists, rather one-sided and absorbed. He leaves Rome now for a short time in the heat of summer, though he has not always done so. He does not think people run any risk by living in Rome all the year round, if they take reasonable precautions against cold. Careless people take cold, and cold brings on fever. For twenty-seven years he was never in England. At the end of that time Mrs Huskisson widow of Mr Huskisson, who was killed on the railway persuaded him, after he had executed a bust of her husband, to accompany her home, and he afterwards visited her every summer to the end of her life. He speaks highly of Miss Hosmer as a sculptor, but does not think women likely to excel generally in sculpture. It is laborious, and needs great perseverance. For her last work Miss Hosmer asked 700 guineas ; an English gentle- man Mr Guinness, I think bought it at his own price of 1000 guineas. . . . Some people have taste, he says, as others have invention, or the power to see ' day- visions ' (so the ancients called the conceptions of an artist), and this taste is to be cultivated by seeing beautiful things, by select 1865.] HOSPENTHAL. 131 reading, and by hearing good remarks. The most beautiful faces, he says, are the most difficult to copy. The uglier faces are, the easier it is to get a good likeness of them." From Lucerne to Ragatz, and from Ragatz to Chur, and then over the San Bernardino Pass to Hospenthal, were the succeeding stages. From Chur Miss Pipe began a letter to Miss Corderoy. " Here we are," she wrote on August 25, "at the foot of the Alps, hoping for a fine to-morrow and a fair journey over the Pass of the Bernardino. I have just come in from a ramble up the magnifi- cent glen of the Schalfikthal, through which the young Rhine runs, chafing at the rocks which roughen its narrow bank and shallow bed, and hurrying on, impatient for a wider and more beneficent life. Here it is a mere brook. The hills rise high and steep on each side of this fine gorge, richly wooded. Vines and maize grow in the valleys. Elder and wild barberries are ripe in the hedges. All about the hillside woods grow beautiful mountain pinks, the veronica of our gardens, blue salvia, the small yellow foxglove, and an exquisite white flower unknown to me. . . . Nothing in Switzerland is so wonderful as the illimitableness of its beauties. . . . Here at Hospenthal (August 31) it is so misty that we cannot proceed to-day, the stretch of country im- mediately before us lying between the foot of St Gothard and the head of the Lake of Lucerne being quite too beautiful to traverse in a fog. So 132 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. while waiting for the weather to clear, we write our letters. " From Chur over the Bernardino Pass, we had a glorious journey. Of the Via Mala everybody talks ; of the Rofflischucht I never heard till we were passing through it, and yet it is not less beautiful than the Via Mala, though less stern in its grandeur. Fancy three miles of fernery on your left, three miles of cascades on your right, the Rhine rushing on stormily from ledge to ledge, leaping, roaring, dashing along, three miles of pine forest above, their tops bronzed with ripe cones, and hoary mountains rising bare beyond them up into the sky ! At the village of San Bernardino, 5000 feet above the sea, we paused for the Sunday, and an exquisite day we had, ' so calm, so bright,' but not ' so cool ' as one would expect on the top of mountains more than a thou- sand feet higher than Snowdon. It was so hot, indeed, that we had to creep from one pine-tree to another, keeping under the shadow of green boughs and leaving the open spaces to the grass- hoppers who made merry, and sprang and chirped. Cranberries and whinberries grew all about in profusion, and here and there were Alpine straw- berries. A beautiful blue gentian is plentiful near the streams and several kinds of small rock plants, among them that which I have shown to you in the fernery at Laleham near akin to our Lady's mantle, with an insignificant greenish flower, but a lovely compound leaf silvered underneath. Half 1865.] ST GQTHARD. 133 an hour's distance from the village lies a lake, small and still, dreaming in the sleep that is among the lonely hills. Grass grows, short and soft, to its very edge, and slopes away up into the fir woods on the hills, not lofty, which rise all around it, and beyond these hills you see the mountains with here and there a snowy peak, and you wonder how any ice can resist such sunshine. The only sound breaking the deep silence of this sweet spot is the tinkling of bells heard from over the water, sheep bells, I suppose, or bells on cows, invisible happy creatures of some kind browsing among the fir woods. We left this charming nook, this wonderful ledge among the peaks of the high Alps, with some regret at 5 o'clock on Monday evening, in the diligence for Bellinzona." From Bellinzona they started in a carriage to recross the Alps by the St Gothard Pass, but were stopped at Faido by a tremendous storm. They went on in a downpour next day. " We were huddled up in the body of the carriage, with windows closed, rugs, shawls, cloaks piled round us in most comfortable confusion. We were glad of a brandy-flask on the way, black coffee at the Hospice near the summit, and camphor at our journey's end, followed by hot soup and the rest of a good dinner at 7 o'clock here, in Hotel Mezer- hof at Hospenthal." They were at Interlaken, Berne, Glion, Lausanne, and Sion all September, but crossed the Simplon early in October, and stopped at Stresa, where, 134 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. leaving Mrs Pipe at the hotel, Miss Pipe and Miss Healey made a week's tour in the valleys of Monte Rosa. This is described in a letter to Miss Pound, dated Varallo, October 9 : " Mists are coming down the mountains and threatening to keep us here until to-morrow. So I have sent into this quaint old town or village of Varallo for paper to write letters on. My mother is established as pensionnaire in the H6tel des Isles Borrome'es at Stresa on the west bank of the Lago Maggiore while we are away. For these few days we have engaged the services of an excellent guide, who knows the district well, although properly he belongs to Mont Blanc. He ascended Mont Blanc with Albert Smith, and was his companion through five or six tours in Switzerland. We left Stresa on Friday morning and crossed the Monte Motteroue on donkeys. It is not heroic to ride on donkeys, but it is less fatiguing than sitting still in an easy- chair. From the summit of the Motterone you see the plains of Lombardy from the snows of Monte Rosa to the white cathedral of Milan, and beyond it Maggiore and five other lakes lying at your feet. As we saw this glorious landscape on Friday lying in shine and shadow under a clouded and changing sky, the mountains stood robed in a purple fit for some dream of Paradise. These hues are seldom seen, says our guide, except far on in autumn. I hope they may never fade out of my memory, but keep me company for the rest of my mortal life. We descended upon Lake Orta, the 1865.] SACRO MONTE. 135 grandest of the lakes, much more imposing than Maggiore. Every one we meet seems to be dis- appointed with Maggiore. For me, however, its luxuriant and most graceful scenery has a singular charm. It is a land of refined outline, harmonious colouring, transparent air, cheerful villages and villas. Upon this you enter past the eternal ice and through the stupendous gorges of the Simplon. We slept at Orta, crossed the lake next morning to Pella, and thence came over the Col di Colena to Varallo. Near the summit of the Col we sat down on the grass to lunch on grapes, biscuits, and Alpine cream from a chalet near by. It was a beautiful spot, where we could have stayed for hours. Yesterday, Sunday, we spent a long morn- ing on the Sacro Monte here at Varallo, with its forty-six chapels, much husk of ceremonial and little grain of worship. Each chapel contains a group of figures life-size representing some event in the Life and Passion of our Lord. We saw, for instance, Him sitting on the well and talking with the woman of Samaria apropos whereof we sat on the grass outside and read the 4th of St John, translating it for the benefit of our guide, who was much surprised and interested by this and other stories, which seemed for the most part new to him. Up the valley far and near come pilgrims to the Sacro Monte. They patter their prayers on the way from chapel to chapel, and gain a liberal indulgence if they mount a holy staircase of stone on their knees." 136 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. From Macugnaga, Val Angasca, a letter was sent to Miss Corderoy giving further particulars of this delightful detour, this time of Val Mastalone and Yal Angasca : " The mountains are glorious to-day, even the lower hills having much snow on them. But the weather is still unsettled. On Monday, if it be fine, we shall return to Stresa. Perhaps this bad weather is the best thing for me. I was so excited with these glorious mountains, that I believe if unchecked I should have gone on to attempt things beyond my strength, and perhaps have come to some harm. I was ready to cross the Monte Moro and the Theodule, and should have gone up the Matterhorn between the two on very slight provocation ! But the snow king lays his soft and silent veto on my wild plans, and coops me up in this most comfortable little inn, where rest, fine air, and the Monte Rosa close at hand, and seen through all three windows of my room, will be better for me than climbing around Zermatt." On their return to Stresa they found Mrs Pipe well and contented, amongst pleasant people, " some botanists, a lady who has found a large mineralogical collection, and another who has travelled in Africa, where no European lady had been before. She heard there that there were ' only lions ' in a certain forest, so she went into it to spend a quiet Sunday ! " Their next halting-place was Lugano, where it 1865.] IN ITALY. 137 was very cold and rainy. " In a chapel close by is a beautiful picture of 1530, by Bernardino Luind, a Madonna with the infant Christ and the Baptist. The Virgin has a face not symmetrically perfect, but full of most tender, pure, womanly feeling. She bends over the children with an affection deepened and chastened by some fore- sight of sorrow. I must go and see it every day while we are here." Milan took some time, but they were perhaps less interested there than in Bologna : " This unique old town, the place of all others to do your shopping in on a rainy day, or a very hot one either. You need neither umbrellas nor parasols, going from end to end under continuous arcades, and the streets, as everywhere in Italy, are so narrow that in crossing from one side to the other you have scarcely time to get dazzled by sun or wet by rain." Here they rejoiced in Niccolb Pisano's wonderful sculptures, saw Raphael's St Cecilia, not altogether uncritically, and the Francia pictures. On November 14 they left Bologna for Florence, where, after much vain inquiry at over - full hotels, they got two rooms in the Hotel Milano, where they spent a month. The weather was grey and cloudy, and the beautiful city never fully revealed herself, but they saw her treasures over and over again. On December 13 they started for Lucca and Pisa en route to Rome, which they reached on the 15th. 138 YEARS OF INCREASE. [CH. iv. " We crossed the Papal frontier about half an hour after midnight, and were there dragged out of the coupe to be fumigated. We stood shivering for some three minutes in a small room with chloride of lime, frowning or smiling at each other according as a sense of the uncomfortable or a sense of the ridiculous predominated. This over, we packed ourselves afresh into the strait coupe and rumbled on to Civita Vecchia. Here our boxes in their turn were fumigated and examined, my photographs of Miss Smith, Anne, and a few other friends being specially scrutinised, lest peradven- ture some profane caricature of the Holy Father should cross the frontier. We started again at 7.30 A.M. and very much enjoyed morning on the Campagna, the blue Mediterranean, the hills, the plains all radiant under a splendid level sun." After a few days at the Hotel Minerva, they found winter quarters at 51 Piazza di Spagna, and settled down comfortably to the fascinating pre- occupations of a first visit to Rome, with day after day of unclouded sunshine to favour them. 1866.] 139 CHAPTER V. KETURN TO WORK. (1866-1867.) IN these days, when so many of us visit Rome, prolonged descriptions of Miss Pipe's residence there might prove tedious, and her biographer may be well advised in noting but few of the incidents which she recorded. Amongst these is one de- scribed in a letter to Anne, her faithful maid. It is dated February 1, 1866 : " We went to St Peter's this morning between eight and nine o'clock. The French troops stood in two long rows for the procession to pass be- tween. ... A little while afterwards singing began inside the church, but far off near the door. As it drew nearer we saw the procession advancing, cardinals, bishops, and other ecclesiastics, and in the midst of them the Pope under a canopy of crimson and gold. His bearers were dressed in o crimson satin, crimson cloth, and white lace. He was robed in crimson embroidered with gold. At other times during the ceremony he wore white 140 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. satin robes and a silver mitre. He sat down upon his throne, and there he blessed the holy candles, for this is Candlemas-day. Every cardinal had a great candle given to him after kneeling to kiss the ring on the Pope's finger and his knee. By- and-by, when all the grand people had received then: candles, there was another procession round the church. The Pope carried a lighted candle, and so did everybody in his train, and very brilliant it looked, the candles flashing on the rich em- broideries and uniforms, and lighting up the scarlet and purple cardinals, the white silk mitres of the bishops, and all their capes of ermine and lace. The Pope did not celebrate mass, but a cardinal in his presence/' Miss Pipe wrote to Miss Corderoy a few days later : " Mr Gibson, the sculptor, died this morn- ing, about seven o'clock, very quietly. Yesterday arrived a telegram from the Queen inquiring after him. It was put into his hands, and when they sought to take it away he held it fast, and, keep- ing it, went to sleep. . . . Life here is indescrib- ably fascinating : I am half- wild with pictures, statues, ruins, and sunshine." She attended a reception at the Austrian Em- bassy, where Baron Hiibner and the Princess Aldobrandini received the guests. Miss Pipe had a keen eye for pretty dresses, and describes in her diary what the great ladies wore, and hits off Cardinal Antonelli as " gay ; his common mouth spoils an otherwise not despicable face ; red cap, 1866.] ROME. 141 gold chain, decoration (diamond star)." At this function " a skeleton lady paraded the rooms as a sort of ghastly joke." During those busy weeks she was studying Italian with grammar and exercises, besides read- ing aloud to her mother all available books on what they saw ' The Ghetto/ by Gregorovius, amongst them. She bought cameos, casts, bronzes, and silk scarves ; went to Tivoli and Hadrian's Villa, and noted as in flower there, anemones, violets, and periwinkles ; rejoiced in the wild maidenhair fern ; visited numberless studios ; saw every gallery, palace, and church, and finally left Rome on February 22 for Civita Vecchia, where they took the steamer to Leghorn, arriving early next morning, and travelling thence to Pisa and past Carrara to Spezzia. After a few days' rest they started for Genoa, where it rained for two days. Then by Milan they reached Brescia, where Miss Pipe saw in the church of San Mazzaro Moretto's Coronation of the Virgin, which includes St Michael defeating the evil one. This detail clung to her memory, and when she returned to Laleham, she wrote to a fine copyist at Brescia and ordered it to be copied and sent to her. It was hung over the fireplace in the inner hall, so that all entering could see this beautiful symbol of the fight with evil and its overcoming, a fight which was very real to her, and on which she dwelt with constant pressure to the point. 142 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. Only one day was given to Venice, for their berths had been taken in the steamer Marathon, which they joined on March 8. The voyage lasted a fortnight, and on the evening of March 23, 1866, Mrs and Miss Pipe were once more safely home at Laleham. The school was in good order, more pupils than ever were pressing to be accepted ; Miss Bolton, with whom Miss Pipe had practically still to make acquaintance, had proved herself to be of sterling value in administrative power, dignity, and charm of manner, influence with the girls and tact with the teachers. Miss Pound had acquitted herself of her most difficult undertaking with due success, and had won the respect of the girls. It was a trying position for her to occupy even for two brief terms the vacant chair of their beloved " school-mother," and daring spirits amongst them, who sighed for the " Restoration," invented a conundrum which partially relieved their feelings : " Why are the Laleham girls inveterate smokers ? " " Because they would gladly give a pound for a pipe." But Miss Pound surrendered her charge intact and unrebellious, and was rewarded by Miss Pipe's deep and grateful appreciation of a service to which she owed complete restoration to health. The absence of anxiety about Laleham had indeed been a main factor in her great gain. But if anxiety had kept its worried brow and petulant interrogations in the background during 1866.] DOCTRINAL FAITH. 143 her absence, these were soon thrust into the peace and planning of the spring holidays. The renewed distress arose from an old contention, the pitiable one which is being for ever raised by ignorant and stagnant minds against those who " trouble the waters." Miss Pipe was again attacked on the question of doctrinal faith, and had again to give out no uncertain sound as to her attitude on cardinal points of Christian teaching. How deeply this grieved her is revealed in her letters on the subject. Either one of her girls had given some imperfect account of the Bible-classes which were so memorable a means of their spiritual enlighten- ment, or, what is more probable, some one to whom this girl was trying to describe their teaching, failed to understand, and promptly sent round the fiery cross. On April 17, 1866, a month after her return, Miss Pipe wrote to one of her old pupils as follows : "A friend has surprised me by the anxiety with which she inquired into the tenor of my teaching in the Bible-class, and asked whether I had lost my faith in the cardinal doctrine of our Saviour's atonement for sin. She named you in connection with this doubt in her mind. I concluded that something said by you must have been misunderstood and changed in the reporting. Or is it possible that I have myself been unclear in my teaching ? Surely not so unclear as that any one who listened as earnestly and intelligently as you always did should be able to think me a believer in only 144 RETURN TO WORK. [OH. v. half the doctrine of last Sunday's Collect, which sets forth Christ as ' both a sacrifice for sin and also an ensample of godly life.' Of one thing I am aware, that I deal less with speculation than with action, less directly with doctrines than with their application to practical life, but in the application of them they themselves are necessarily dwelt on more or less, and this truth of the Atonement, so vital and central, lying at the very root of the Christian life, comes before us continually. I have said to my Unitarian friends, ' Recommend no pupils to my school who are not prepared to hear me teach in my Bible-class the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Christ.' And to my girls I have taught that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself not reconciling Himself unto the world : He was never alienated. It is we who have been alienated in our minds and need restor- ing through the adorable Atonement of Christ, our Mediator to the Father, who has loved us all through, as the father in the parable loved his prodigal son. We were too far gone to be restored by any ' ensample of a godly life,' or by any mani- festation of unsuffering benevolence towards us such as He gives us in His rain and sunshine. By His stripes we are healed. I dare not attempt to explain to the logical understanding this mystery of Love as if it were a mathematical proposition. It is this bleeding Helper, obedient for us unto the anguish of Gethsemane and the bitter death of the Cross, whose dauntless and all-prevalent love 1866.] WIDTH OF MIND. 145 quells the terror, the enmity, the dark mistrust of God, with which the fallen mind is filled. Shall not He who has given us His Son, with Him freely give us all things ? God forbid that I should glory save in His Cross, not in the godly life, but in the atoning Cross, of Jesus Christ, my Lord. I have heard a complaint, not of you in particular, but of my girls in general, that they are impatient of narrow views and narrow-minded people. Such a complaint always gives me keen pain. I am ashamed of my ill success as a teacher. Better ^ ~ narrow - mindedness than contempt of narrow- I) jlAfr mindedness. Anger on the part of narrow people against those who seem to them to be loose in their views, is almost righteous. But impatience on the part of the professedly tolerant is a weakness and an inconsistency and an unpardonable sin. For what is width of mind unless it be power of seeing truth and goodness widely spread in human creeds and lives ? power to recognise truth under disguising forms and limitations ? and this should surely widen our charities and our sympathies ; increase and not lessen our patience ; increase and not lessen our reverence and love for others. It is natural in the narrow-minded to be repelled by what they cannot understand. It is absurd as well as most wrong on the part of wider thinkers to stand aloof from those whom they profess to comprehend and tolerate. Capacity to understand widely is less than nothing and vanity, unless found along with capacity to love greatly. 146 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. Knowledge the knowledge of the wisest shall pass away, losing itself in a higher knowledge ; that which seems to be knowledge now shall show hereafter as ignorance : but charity abideth for ever. Let us not flatter ourselves that we are tolerant till we have learned to bear intolerance. We must be able to love them that do not love us ; to sympathise with those who do not sym- pathise with us, or we have not the mind of Christ, and our ' wide views ' are but our condem- nation. ... I am sure you will be pleased to hear that I am quite well again ; wonderfully refreshed and invigorated by this long and delightful holi- day. Some day I hope to see you and tel} you a host of travellers' tales." In a letter dated August 5 of the same year, Miss Pipe resumed the subject with an added depth of feeling to the same old pupil, who was passing through the chill valley of wavering faith. " I have known too much of the anguish of doubt to be able to listen otherwise than with keen and tender sympathy to the voice of such as I hear ' crying in the night.' Still I listen with hope, because, though weeping endured with me for a night, yet joy came in the morning. And the light of a morning without clouds, brightening towards infinite noon, is sweeter by reason of that horror of great darkness which went before it. I have found truth enough to live by, and this is promised to all who set their heart on doing the will of God. Truth enough, I say, and this is all 1866.] RELIGIOUS LIVING. 147 that we must hope or need wish for. To absolute theological truth, probably the most rigorous thinkers are little nearer than the feeblest : ' In His own words we Christ adore, But angels, as we speak, Higher above our meaning soar Than we o'er children weak.' This persuasion respecting the imperfectness of human creeds leads me to care less and less for religious opinions ; more and more for religious living. ' Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers.' If we lived up to the narrowest of our narrow creeds, should we not be far purer and mightier persons than we are ? Not that I would stifle thought or despise it. But it is not by the intel- lect alone by any amount of ratiocination and argumentation that we shall arrive at the truth. The logical understanding is destructive rather than creative, and if we follow it alone, it will eat away article after article of our belief, till not one stone be left upon another of the house which our spirit should dwell in. Divine truth is not to be taken captive by logic. A meek heart and an obedient life will help us more than syllogisms. It is wonderful to note how, after some struggle with a fierce temptation and triumphant victory over it, all the mind is flooded with sacred light, and truths standing in no immediate relation with the point for which we have been contending, come out like 148 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. distant mountains showing through the cleared air. Above, and beyond all, hold fast to meek- ness. 'The meek will He guide in judgment.' If we are in earnest morally, and not merely intel- lectually inquisitive, doubt will be pain. To a sincere soul, wrung with doubt of holy things, much talk is impossible. We suffer too much to be able to talk. I have passed through moments of awful doubt, in which I durst not speak even to my mother, who commonly shares with me every innermost thought and feeling. The hor- rible dread of disturbing her mind has sealed my lips in the sternest and loneliest silence. " On the subject of eternal punishment, Tenny- son, in ' In Memoriam,' embodies very nearly what I think and feel, except that his misgivings arise out of a contemplation of nature, mine out of the awful freedom of the will. On the inspiration of Scripture I cannot say much worth reading, having never thought a great deal about it : it is not a subject that has troubled me." The summer holiday of 1866 was spent at Pon- tresina, whither Mrs and Miss Pipe travelled direct, and where they stayed till it was time to go home again. Of this holiday, the only memor- andum which I can find occurs in a letter from Dr Kinkel, dated September 17, 1866. Laleham was to lose this great and inspiring teacher. He had been offered permission to return to Germany, and had declined it, but had accepted an invitation from the University at Zurich to fill the chair of 1866.] DB KINKEL. 149 Art-history. He wrote : " I would not trouble you with any business during your glorious mountain stay, and so delayed writing. Your description of the Alps, so sharp in its outline, so glorious in its tints, makes me regret that the practical work of life turns you away from literary pursuits. Do not believe me such a barbarian that marmots should interest me more than edelweiss ; but in teaching geography, I am afraid one excites less interest by botany than by zoology, unless we could throw into the former the powerful enthusi- asm which prompted your lines on the Alpine flora. Meanwhile, I have been rambling in my own footsteps, having been to Cornwall again, and especially Tintagel. The mystery of early European life, where it begins to turn into history, I am not speaking of the Lake people, is Keltism, and more and more, as we separate our- selves from that root of our present existence, our Teutonism becomes dry, unpoetical, fancyless. The terrible materialism of the present Cornish race the worse for being without joy and merri- ment taught me the deep lesson that nations do not gain by giving up their own language and entering the circle of another nationality. I mean to apply this lesson to our German pretension of ' Germanising ' the Sclavonians. We leave on the 28th or 29th. My friends intend giving us a public entertainment, which I see advertised in to-day's papers. I hope I shall see you and Mrs Pipe again ; but if not now, I come about New Year, 150 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. when some lectures in the north and a university examination will recall me to England. Here are some lines in answer to your last kind word about the Fridays : ' Wenn Sie uns fehlen, geht es schief ! Macht es nicht so gefahrlich. ! Die Welt lauft wie sie gestern lief, Niemand ist unentbehrlich ! ' " Mr Sonnenschein, whom Dr Kinkel had recom- mended, took his place, and when I first knew Laleham, was giving what were called the Physical Geography lectures and lessons in arithmetic. Miss Bolton, whose mother was German, and who spoke and wrote German perfectly, undertook that branch of the language curriculum, and for a short time Miss Pipe resumed her lessons in history. If Mr Sonnenschein did not inspire intellectual ardour as Dr Kinkel had done, he was a notable teacher, and a teacher of teachers, and his experi- ence of German methods, as well as a positive genius for gradual and progressive mental training, leading his class from step to step upwards by a logical gradient, made him a valuable addition to the wealth of educative influence at Laleham. On January 26, 1867, I went to Laleham to occupy an interim position between the formal staff of resident teachers and the girls, than whom I was much older. I desired to see the working of a great girls' school, and to be taught how to teach, and Miss Pipe allowed me to come to her for these advantages, and to give in return some 1867.] FIRST CONTACT WITH LALEHAM. 151 time to the correction of abstracts, to teaching preparation classes, to taking notes of the lectures and copying them out for her, all occupations which furthered my own purpose. Just released from a monotonous pressure of Edinburgh gaieties, of which I was heartily weary, longing for work sufficient to absorb energies hitherto wasted but not yet atrophied, my first contact with the school and its schoolmistress made an indelible impres- sion which I would fain reproduce in all its orig- inal force and form. I had travelled from the north on a certain Thursday (the 26th January), which was appointed for the return of Miss Pipe's resident governesses, French and English. The drive from the north-west to the south-west of London, Clapham Park, so much more secluded and stately then than now, the turn from King's Road into Clarence Road, and through the gate to the front door of Laleham House, I still dimly remember, because of an almost stifling apprehen- sion which accompanied me that I was a hope- lessly inadequate person, little short of an impostor, who dared to seek admission into so lofty a sphere without a single qualification which could guar- antee her fitness. For I discounted all the kind things said by the lady who introduced me to Miss Pipe, partly because the Scot in me held appreciation for far less than it was worth, and partly because, brought up in a then surviving discipline of Calvinistic depreciation, it never oc- curred to me as possible that there was any good 152 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. thing in me. I was only conscious of an immense desire to work ; to try the treadmill if I could not climb ; to be about some business which would annihilate my useless past, and initiate at all events wholesome drudgery, if more ambitious usefulness were out of the question. And so God sent me, through Mrs William Hertz, to Miss Pipe and Laleham. To Mrs Hertz, now passed away, my thoughts often turn with boundless gratitude. I was ushered that afternoon into what was called the morning-room at Laleham, a drawing- room separated then from the large music-room by curtains, which were later taken down and replaced by screens. A moment later these curtains were lifted in the centre and Miss Pipe came in. She was dressed in rich black silk, with a sweeping train ; it was made a little open at the neck, where was a frill of real lace, and she wore a locket set with opals, pendent from a narrow black velvet ribbon. I knew later that it held some of Janet Chambers's hair. She came forward with a welcome so courteous and sweet, that black appre- hension spread its wings and fled. I remember her lovely colouring, her rich coils and ringlets of bronze-gold hair in waving braids upon the fore- head, her clear, blue, penetrating eyes, full of kindly interest, and her questions about my journey, about the friends I had left, just as if I had come to pay a visit instead of to undergo a crisis as acute as the sloughing of a serpent's skin, as radical as a reincarnation. She took me to the bedroom pre- 1867.] A LITTLE KINGDOM. 153 pared for me, saw to hot water and help in un- packing, and bade me come downstairs when ready to dinner in the library. There I found her and Mrs Pipe, a beautiful old lady who sat knit- ting by the fire, and Miss Levick, who had come for a few weeks to give help. Dinner was served for me alone, while Miss Pipe and Miss Levick made a list of articles so incongruous I remember " child's leg" and " primroses " as two of the items that at last I laughed, and they all laughed with me. The spell of shyness was broken, and I felt if not yet admitted to fellowship with the angels, at least on terms of speaking acquaint- ance. One by one the other teachers arrived, and by the time we said good-night I was aware that the bar was crossed, that the ship stood out to sea, and that I was one of the humbler mariners on board an imposing frigate, captained, officered, and manned, and under an organisation absolutely complete and efficient. Indeed, it was always as a ship, or a little kingdom, that my simile-seeking mind pictured Laleham. We were so shut in there, so uncon- scious of an outer world, so occupied with the discipline, service, and interests of our own world, so awake to their importance, so recreated by each other and by the routine of varied work ; and above all, so bound in allegiance to our captain, in whom we had implicit faith. It was this last condition which made the life of Laleham. That life was the breath of its ruler. 154 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. V. There was no detail into which her moulding and vivifying mind did not penetrate. It is, indeed, difficult, recalling those distant days, truthfully to present a conclusion to which all my observa- tion, all my experience, in them conducted me. Miss Pipe was sometimes playfully compared to Queen Elizabeth ; and perhaps, except for its superb purity, refinement, and spirituality, her character as ruler somewhat resembled that of the great Tudor queen, but while Elizabeth wisely selected and sternly governed her serv 1 - ants, Miss Pipe's will lived in those who carried out the details of her government. There is no real analogy. Elizabeth ruled for herself and for the policy which concerned her, Miss Pipe ruled for God and for His righteousness. We have already noticed that making for the highest, which was the motive -power of her compound character, mental and moral. This was so in- evitable in its recurrence, that there was no smallest detail of the working of her school which had not passed through the most scrup- ulous investigation as to its fitness from every point of view, paper, pens, study - chairs, the height of study -tables ; and in more important matters food, ventilation, drainage, the alterna- tion of study with rest, and the insistence upon a daily interval of complete solitude for each girl. When this principle came to be applied to revising the curriculum of study, as was essential after every few years, it was felt in the stern and 1867.] METHODS. 155 laborious research made into the influence of that about to be abandoned or modified, and the painstaking acquisition of information concerning the reforms to be introduced. For this she called a council of her teachers, resident and visiting, and submitted her plans to their opinion ; each was debated from every point of view ; she held tenaciously to what her conviction approved, and altered willingly what their arguments proved to be in need of change. The one aim was to estab- lish on a basis that could be trusted at all points, an integral course of work, whose parts supported each other, and made for education in its highest sense. During each term there was a weekly gather- ing of the resident teachers on Friday evenings, when, after tea, notebooks were produced and details were given of the week's work and of the progress made by each girl in the classes discussed. Of all the more important details Miss Pipe made notes. Laxity, indifference, triviality on the part of a girl, she dealt with in her weekly half -hour with each alone, and that with such finesse that the girl found her- self making confession of her fault, and, except in serious cases, unwitting the source of Miss Pipe's knowledge. These half-hours were instru- ments of their highest education. They were, I believe, delightful to the girls themselves, and ever more so, as they yielded to her influence. She made them the occasion of discovering what 156 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. really lay in each young nature, of drawing out and cherishing all that was best, of aiding power- fully in the suppression of all that was furtive, insincere, undesirable. Now and then a girl baffled even her penetration, and it took several terms to reach the foe lurking behind entrench- ments, but she was rarely altogether foiled. Once a very difficult case cost her an illness, so dis- tressed was she at the obstinacy with which a girl defended a position which only blindness to the right could have led her to occupy. I can remember her suffering, the tears which she shed, the physical collapse at last. But this was very rare ; her appeal, her prayers, and her example rarely missed their mark, and generations of girls passed from her care with wills renewed and lives dedicated, who call her "blessed" now, and whose children in all parts of the world owe, under God, their maternal training to those " half- hours." It was almost a guide to a girl's growth in every kind of grace to note how her terror of the "half-hour" was gradually trans- formed into liking, and how liking quickened into delight. But this was not her only means of influence. What were called the Bible-classes became powerful in her hands. These took place four mornings in the week and on Sunday afternoons. At these Miss Pipe was alone with the girls, no teacher nor visitor was admitted. As a singular favour and kindness I was per- mitted to attend the Bible-classes during three 1867.] "PASSAGES." 157 terms. On Sundays the subjects were wholly spiritual, and the minds of the girls were pre- pared for the class by finding and learning por- tions of Scripture which bore on them. But the week-day class, held in the morning for half an hour, had if the same object a different mode of accomplishing it. Often the meeting of teachers decided their particular tendency, and what Miss Pipe said directed to no special girl contained some clear exposition of the failings to which schoolgirls are prone, so delicately pressed upon the attention of all as to seem of valuable guid- ance to all. On other occasions a passage of lofty prose or beautiful poetry would form the text. These " passages " were copied and learnt by heart, and were repeated by the girls from time to time. Miss Pipe believed in the power of great thoughts, and the girls aided her in selecting them. " Day by day/' writes Lady M'Dougall, "we were convinced of sin, of right- eousness, of judgment here and now ; and every day the way of holiness looked more attractive, and slow unwilling feet were constrained to follow thitherward." Evening prayers formed another arresting and constraining means of grace. Morning prayers were taken by Miss Bolton, but in the evening Miss Pipe presided. " The girls came in and the servants, and the door was shut. After a hymn, she read the Scripture chosen with so much reverence and penetration that it seemed fuller 158 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. of meaning than before. All kneeled down, and quietly she poured forth her soul in prayer and confession of sin and weakness, and laid hold of Almighty love and power to raise us up." One other passage from Lady M'Dougall's letter should be quoted as giving a graphic picture of her dealing with the individual. " One girl had been only three days at Laleham when she was sent for to see Miss Pipe alone. She had been flagrantly inconsiderate, and had laughed at the wrong time. Miss Pipe received her quietly, and told her of her fault. The girl replied that she couldn't help it. ' Your father, I know, is a gentleman/ said Miss Pipe, ' your mother a lady, but what sort of a person you are I don't know.' The words were trenchant, but wholesome. The girl left the room humble, contrite, and full of better resolutions. A week later she was again sent for. This time she had offended somewhat in ignorance ; the principles of truth and sincerity were involved. She sat with Miss Pipe for over an hour, and there were such grief and gentleness, such explicit handling of the subject, that the girl got a new view of what goes to make up sincerity in thought and word and deed, and the blessedness of the first two beatitudes was hers. So the work went on. Character and conduct, as shown in each girl's life and work at school, were scrutinised, corrected, developed." Miss Lidgett alludes to Miss Pipe's religious 1867.] HALF-HOUR'S SOLITUDE. 159 teaching in her contribution to the ' Memorial Magazine' of 1907: "How wonderfully she made us see that salvation was a matter for every day, that Christ was at our side in every conflict with evil, either in our own hearts or in outside things. How she tried to teach us to watch against world- liness, that we should never give way to vain excitement as to the impression we might be making on other people, but whether in company or alone we should live simply in the presence of God ; that we should not dream nor scheme as to pleasant things that might happen to us, but be glad in all good that might come, and that we should learn to dwell firmly in the peace of God whatever might befall us. These were fre- quently amongst the last words of her evening prayer, ' May we all meet unscathed by the world, without one missing, in Thy Kingdom at last.'" To secure freedom from overstrain the daily half- hour's solitude was decreed. It might be spent in the garden or in the bedroom, in read- ing, needlework, or retrospect and meditation ; but it was to be restfully spent, and no school- work might monopolise it. It was as carefully registered in each girl's time-table as was the most important class. For half an hour all work and worries were to be forgotten, and peace was to be invoked. Miss Pipe was too wise to bid her girls use this half-hour in prayer; but by all whom she had led upwards to the point 160 RETURN TO WORK. [OH. v. of finding peace in the presence of God it was used for prayer. Another detail of her provision for their secular education impressed me with her scrupulous care. The library was stocked with every best book of reference, and yearly large additions were made to its shelves. This annual instalment bore on the lectures given during the year whether Laws of Health, literature, physical geography, history, or art. There were opportunities for reading passages from these books to the girls assembled in the music - room, such as intervals during the " drawing - rooms," at the mending- classes on Saturday afternoons, sometimes at what was called " Dorcas " an evening in the week when the "drawing -room" gave place to a work -meeting at which the girls sewed gar- ments for the poor, garments cut out and shaped by a skilful governess who superintended the sewing. The girls rebelled a little at solid reading during " Dorcas," as there had to be much consultation and correction connected with their work ; so a story was substituted, and in this way some romance of Sir Walter Scott's, Mrs Gaskell's, Anthony Trollope's, Thackeray's, George Eliot's, or of other classic writers, would be read aloud during the sewing. There were many shelves full of such books, and the girls might borrow them for occasional relief from their harder work. Mrs Pipe had a defined and important place 1867.] MRS PIPE. 161 in the administration. She kept all the books, managed the servants, instructed the housekeeper, looked after the health of the entire household, and fulfilled many a duty which her motherly eye discerned. I can remember, in the bewilderment of my first weeks at Laleham, while I was still groping in the dark for a clear understanding of my work, how often in the hall, in corridors, in my bedroom, the dear and beautiful old lady would come to me and take me in her arms and cheer me, whispering an assurance of Miss Pipe's satisfaction. And this she did to all who needed encouragement. Between Miss Bolton and Mrs Pipe there existed a special sympathy, and they would often chat together and dis- cover the fun in things and, too, the tears in things. Mrs Pipe was always present at the teachers' weekly meeting, and regulated its length. " She was apt to get a little tired, and did not suffer us gladly if we stayed late. So sometimes she slowly opened thumb and fore- finger to suggest a yawn ; and if that had not the desired effect she said, 'What month comes after February ? ' Whereupon we took the rather broad hint and our leave." The friend who re- cords this gives us another brief glimpse of her. " I told her I was going to tuck up my brats. Her face became one reproachful note of ex- clamation ; but I assured her I learned from Professor Meiklejohn's Grammar that brat was really a beautiful word closely connected with L 162 RETURN TO WORK. [CH. v. bird, brood, and other charming things. Ap- peased, though a little doubtful, she observed, ' Then I wonder when my brat will come home.' Miss Pipe had gone out for the evening, and the thought of her coming back in festal gar- ments and being called a brat was too much for both of us, and we parted with a guilty laugh." The hoine staff in 1867 consisted of Miss Bolton, Miss Oldfield, Mademoiselle Mequillet, and myself. Of Miss Bolton, Mrs Armitage Bulley has -given so true and appreciative a de- scription, that I cannot do better than quote it : " Miss Bolton was a wise, strong, just woman, with a great personal charm, and we were very much attached to her. She was not a trained teacher, were there any trained teachers in those days? but she was both able and culti- vated. In our intervals of leisure we elder girls loved to gather where she was sitting and talk out the questions which were beginning to stir us. She would ; drop in a word here and there, guiding or suggesting. Her conversation, if not a liberal education in itself, was at least a guide to a liberal education. Her familiarity with German and English literature ' brought us acquainted ' with books and ideas, and gave a great stimulus to our reading. She was tall, graceful, and very dignified, and was a power in the school second only to Miss Pipe herself." Miss Pipe admired and valued Miss Bolton, 1867.] TEACHERS. 163 and she remained at Laleham until her marriage to Mr Sonnenschein in 1873. Miss Oldfield was an accomplished, refined, and sympathetic teacher, whom Miss Healey had recommended for Laleham, conscientious and gentle, with a gift of clear teaching. She undertook some of the teaching of music, all the teaching of the English language and com- position, and courses of lessons on other subjects. She was too delicate and sensitive to exercise a powerful influence on the girls, but they had a sincere respect for her. Her teaching of sacred music was exquisite, and as all had to take turns in playing the tunes for hymns at prayers, all passed under her training. Mademoiselle Me'quillet, who came to Laleham in September 1867, became one of its most valu- able assets, and remained there for nearly a quarter of a century. Miss Pope's reminiscence of her is so charming that it must be quoted : " My heart went out to dear Mademoiselle Me'quillet, who was a barleycorn shorter than I. Together we could shed a sympathetic tear at having to bring up the rear of straggling girls with a partner five feet eleven (Miss Bolton). Who does not recall Mademoiselle holding up a patient cheek morning by morning for a score or so of sleepy damsels to kiss ? And how punctually did she shut the door, to the grief of those who were on the wrong side of it ! For twenty-three years once only was she missing, 164 RETURN TO WORK. [OH. v. which says a great deal for the much maligned air of Clapham. She was always the same serene, composed, equable little lady, and in her hands ' Chardenal ' became a fairy tale and ' Le Petit Precepteur ' a golden legend. If her gentle spirit was ever ruffled, it was when some bold sinner trifled with her cher Pottles" (this was the cat). " Then did she arise in her wrath and give that sinner a poe'sie to learn." Mademoiselle Mequillet gave all the French lessons, and had a special share in the super- intendence of order. She was never known to omit or to forget a duty. She spoke her native language with a charm of diction and accent very rare amongst French governesses. And she bore herself with such delicate self-respect and with such courtesy to all around her, that her presence added the distinction of her breeding as well as the invulnerable integrity of her character to the staff. For a short time Signer Pagliardini gave French lectures on the history and structure of the language, but these were superseded as unneces- sary on further acquaintance with Mademoiselle Me"quillet's teaching. I remember Miss Chessar's admirable lectures on the Laws of Health, which included some careful physiological teaching. As it fell to me to write out these lectures, and to prepare her class in acquiring some elementary acquaintance with bony structure and organic mechanism, they 1867.] THE COMMITTEE. 165 are impressed on my memory, along with some of the books which supplemented them, 'Le Petit Royaume,' ' Un Morceau de Pain,' Combe, and others. The girls were drawn into the superintendence of order as they grew in experience and sympathy with its principles. There was a small committee of the older girls, on whom rested details of co-operation not so easily reached by the teachers, and membership was a distinction eagerly coveted. These girls exercised considerable influence over those younger and less docile, and they formed a small body of aides-de-camp to Miss Pipe and the teachers, and were employed to assist in sudden emergencies as well as in daily discipline. They had the privileges of their promotion, might walk out two at a time without surveillance, had direct access to Miss Pipe, and helped her in several matters. Many of them have kept the little notes which she would write to them from her bedroom or library, engaging them in some office for her, and these notes are charged with as fine a courtesy in petition as if they were addressed to some dignitary beyond the precincts. She never forgot the right of each and all to courtesy, nor did she ever forget the right of each and all to stern reproof when it was needed. This was very rare, but when there was a diverg- ence from truth, from honourable treatment of others, then she spoke " as one having authority." I can remember only one such occasion, when a 166 RETURN TO WORK. [OH. v. weak girl had erred both in truth and honour. Her defaulting came to Miss Bolton's knowledge, and so to Miss Pipe's. Next morning the latter came to her Bible-class her face almost petrified with pain and perplexity. In a low, stern voice she told the story to all, and then, without naming her, asked the offender to rise. She obeyed in tears, and bowed her head to the penalty, uttered in few words, but these charged with the power which convinces and converts. There was no possibility of our scorning her, that had been guarded against ; the impression upon us all was one of deep sorrow and ardent desire to lift her out of her weakness, to set her feet and our feet upon the Rock. But it cost Miss Pipe many days of suffering. From the very beginning, even before their arrival at Laleham, she felt herself re- spqnsible for her girls. Here is a letter written to one of them before she came. Her two sisters had been educated there, but had left, and Miss Pipe felt tenderly towards the younger girl who was to leave a very happy home alone: "I feel much for you in prospect of your lonely journey to school next Friday. I can only say that you must try to forget some of your own burdens in helping me to bear mine, which press me just now with unusual weight. I shall miss your sisters almost as painfully as you will. Never has there been a time, I think, when I should have been so glad of their help, unless indeed during my absence from England. Next term the Miss 1867.] LETTER TO PUPIL. 167 Bancrofts are returning, and so is Miss Roberts. Besides these three there will probably be seven new girls, so this is almost like ten new girls, with only fifteen left of those who were here last; term. I have only once before had so large a prdportion of new girls, and I cannot face the difficulty of getting them all into a right mood and spirit without serious apprehension and anxiety. My chief comfort and hope (except, of course, the highest of all) lie in you and a few- of your com- panions. Almost everything will depend upon the tone you ' give to this little society*; so I must trust