Dorothea Beale was also fortunate in being one of a large family. The spirit of the home seems to have been one of love and service. There was also a strong intellectual atmosphere, in which the children learnt early to love the best in literature. Her father would often read aloud to his children extracts from Shakespeare and other great writers, and from him and her mother Dorothea began early to imbibe a love of learning, and to find in literature some revelation of the great spiritual realities. Dorothea’s education and that of the older members of the family was at first under the guidance of a governess. It must have been quite early in life that she received her first inkling of the incompetence of teachers of that day. She remembered a rapid succession of teachers whom Mrs. Beale was compelled to dismiss on account of their inability to teach. There appears to have been only one satisfactory governess, a Miss Wright, who was excellent: after she left, the girls were sent to school. “It was a school,” says Dorothea Beale in her autobiography, “considered much above the average for sound instruction: our mistresses were women who had read and thought: they had taken pains to arrange various schemes of knowledge: yet what miserable teaching we had in many subjects: history was learned by committing to memory little manuals, rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the Lamentations of King Hezekiah, the pretty, but somewhat weak, ‘Mother’s Picture’ of Cowper, and worse doggerel verses on the solar system.” At the age of thirteen Dorothea was obliged to leave school on account of ill-health. She always considered this a fortunate circumstance as it enabled her to carry on her own education. No doubt a good deal of time was lost in following the circuitous routes of all self-educators, but the grit, determination, and power to overcome difficulties thereby developed, probably more than compensated for this. Libraries, notably those of the London Institute and Crosby Hall, at this time supplied her with many good books. The Medical Book Club circulated some books of general interest. She and her sisters were also able to attend excellent lectures given at the Literary Institution, Crosby Hall, and at the Gresham Institute.