The dramatic days were over. The task that now lay before S. J.-B. was to pick up all that remained of herself after the conflict, and settle down to practice. It is a solemn moment in the history of any doctor when he or she deliberately takes in hand the issues of life and death: mistakes can no more be avoided in this than in any other walk of life, and yet the consequences here are so much more apparently important. And if it is a solemn moment for any man or woman, it was surely not less so for her who for years had been a city set on a hill. In the course of the long struggle youth had quite slipped away; her best energies were spent; her nervous system was overstrained beyond the possibility of complete recuperation. If George Eliot could say with some truth that she began Romola as a young woman and ended it an old one, how much more might S. J.-B. have said this of her education in medicine. Perhaps the coward in her would gladly now have shunned the conflict altogether. Small say was allowed to that coward at any time, and at this juncture few even of S. J.-B.’s friends realized that—as regarded output of energy—she had already done a life’s work. No one would have been surprised if she had died a few years before, in the stress of the fight; but the human memory is short, and, as she had survived, almost everyone now looked upon the toil of the last ten years as simply the introduction to the volume. She was now expected to show how great a success a woman doctor can be. First came the anxious question where to settle, and, while she meditated on this, she was making good, at Brompton and wherever she could find an entry,[135] the deficiencies in her hospital education. Her original plan had been to settle in London, to foster the School she had founded, and at the same time to be within easy reach of her Mother,—the Mother for whom she would at any moment in her life have thrown up every hope and plan that guided her. There is no doubt that this would have been in most respects the ideal arrangement. There is room for everyone in London. In those days it was absolutely essential for a woman doctor to settle in a town large enough to allow for the overwhelming proportion of patients who declined to take their lives in their hands, so to speak, by trusting one of their own sex. Even if the patient herself was willing to lean her whole weight on an untried plank, husbands and mothers stood in the way. Indeed there were girls who reckoned it the prime luxury involved in earning their own living that they became free to employ the doctor of their choice—a woman. It is true that patients—and still more their male relatives—were readier to trust S. J.-B. than they would have been to trust most other women. Her inherent motherliness was not weakened by any aggressive femininity; but on the other hand it is not to be supposed that she was any less alarming than she had been as a student. No doctor ever inspired greater enthusiasm and devotion than she did, but it was on the whole the few to whom she appealed. Her vein of tenderness lay too deep for the casual eye to see; and many were afraid of the occasional high-handed imperious ways and the disregard of what people were likely to say. “It was like being lifted on a comet’s tail,” writes a patient to whom she had been called in an emergency in March 1878, “when you came in, strong and swift, with your eagle wings, getting over distances in a third of the time other people take to do it.” This is admirable, and describes what many felt, but although being lifted on a comet’s tail is exactly what many patients want, the treatment is not universally applicable. London, then, would probably have supplied S. J.-B. with a larger practice than she could have worked; many friends, and particularly her brother, were keenly anxious that she should settle there; Mr. Norton always regretted her departure; but, now that the School had been taken out of her hands, it seemed inadvisable that she should remain as a looker-on. The difficulty was to find another place big and representative enough: she dreaded the great midland towns. After much consultation, she decided on the last place on earth she might have been expected to choose,—on Edinburgh. It was partly the bracing climate, partly the beautiful drives, partly the many friends who had stood by her so gallantly, that led to this spirited decision, but on the whole it was a mistake. The smoke of the conflict was still hot, and some of those who had admired her most had admired her for qualities which were not what they sought in a physician. Moreover, she was the last person on earth to play up to the expectations of the community in which she lived. The Edinburgh of those days was a more conventional place than Edinburgh is now, and doctors above all were expected to conform to a particular standard. There was a general impression that piety paid and that an interest in missions was a great help to success in practice. “You never will succeed unless you conform to these usages,” said a friend: “You might have Edinburgh at your feet if you would go to church regularly and show yourself a religious woman,” said another. It is needless to say that these were not the arguments to use with S. J.-B. Never, moreover, since the far-off school-days in which she had given a highly-valued shilling to “the Jews” had she taken any interest in missions. That vein in her was worked out, or transmuted into something else. The more she read of the old religions—and she did read—the more she found in them to admire and respect,—the more it seemed to her that they were the fitting medium for the training of the people to whom they had been given. It must be frankly admitted too that she continued to see such questions in the atmosphere of the particular Evangelical school in which she had been brought up; in recognizing the evolution of the individual—of herself as an individual—she failed to recognize the evolution of the medium; and her life was so full of active beneficent interests as to leave scant time for the consideration of questions that did not at first sight appeal to her,—that did not seem to be her job. In the Edinburgh, too, of those days, the ordinary people who “counted” were the people who liked things done “just so.” It disturbed their sense of the fitting, for instance, that S. J.-B. should pay professional visits, driving herself in a pony phaeton. Altogether she was too big, too untrammeled for the post. What was wanted was the woman who is a credit to any cause she may adopt. There are plenty of them now-a-days. Finally, S. J.-B. realized from the first that, with her limited physical resources, she could not combine a social with a professional life. Hospitality is a poor word to describe the manner in which her door stood open to the few she loved, to those whom she thought she could help, to all in whom she recognized any sort of spiritual kinship; but from ordinary social engagements she stood aloof. She refused invitations to dinner,[136] or made excuse to leave so early that she might better, perhaps, not have gone; she declined to be lionised in any way; and she was apt to snub those whom she suspected of wishing to know her from motives of curiosity. We must not forget how different she could be from all this,—how radiant, how sympathetic, how full of humour and fun. “What a comfort it is,” writes a patient at this time, “to see your dear supporting face!” “You always come as Hercules did to Alcestis,” writes another. “Emily and I have often spoken of your ‘How are you?’ being like his, ‘I am here to help.’” Nor am I working up to the avowal that she was a professional failure: she was not: in many ways she was a great success. But if Edinburgh—like Cousin Ellie of old—could have made “even a slight alteration” in her, she might almost indeed have had the town at her feet.
She took the house 4 Manor Place, and in June 1878 she put her plate on the door and began. Three months later she started a small dispensary. Her professional isolation was great: Dr. Pechey was at Leeds; the other medical women were in London or farther afield. A doctor in the early days is sorely handicapped if he cannot discuss difficult cases and questions with his contemporaries and seniors. S. J.-B. never had, except for a few days at a time, the daily chit-chat—what students call the “shop”—that is so helpful; but she was not allowed to suffer. Dr. Heron Watson, Dr. George Balfour, and Dr. Angus Macdonald supported her with a chivalrous loyalty of which it is difficult to write calmly even now. They encouraged her to appeal to them at any time: they put the whole wealth of their learning and experience at her disposal; and—what was not a matter of course in those days—there was not a single question in all the complicated domain of medicine which they would not discuss with her as frankly as if she had been a man. It must be borne in mind that in her own special subject, the diseases of women, her equipment was all that could be desired. It was not for nothing that she had worked for two years under Dr. Sewall at Boston. If adequate training had been available, she might have made a great gynÆcological surgeon, for she had great calmness and presence of mind in an emergency, and her hands, though full of character, were small and deft. Dr. Sewall always regretted the waste of her potentiality in this respect. The following extracts are from letters written during the first few months of practice: To her Mother, “My Darling, I know you will be pleased to hear that I yesterday received fees which just completed my first £50,—earned in Edinburgh in less than three months,—and that in what they call the “empty” season. And what pleases me still better is that everyone of my patients has done well. Several have left my hands practically recovered, and those who are still there are all going on satisfactorily. And as among them were two cases to which I was called when the patient was described as ‘dying’ (and both got well) I think I may very well be content. I have had 23 patients (nearly 100 visits) at my private house, and about as many more at my Dispensary, which has only been open a fortnight; so I don’t think there is much doubt about the ‘demand’ nor about my prospects.” To Dr. King Chambers, “I feel I am learning a great deal from the large variety of practice here. You will see from the enclosed paper that I have the help and support of four[137] of the best medical men in Edinburgh, and they are all excessively kind in giving me advice and help as often as I want it. No one ever had better friends and I doubt if anyone ever liked a profession better than I like mine. I find that each of my cases involves so much reading and thinking that I am almost anxious they should not multiply too fast.” To Dr. (now Sir Thomas) Barlow to whom she had commended a young colleague, “March 24th. [1879.] Dear Sir, I thank you very much for the kind response to my note which reached me this morning. I feel sure that you will find Miss K. grateful for your kindness and most anxious to benefit by it. I have had repeated cause myself in my own Dispensary work to be thankful for the various lessons I learned from you and Dr. Lee. Thank you also for the kind interest you express in my personal success, which indeed is all that I could desire. I have about 25 or 30 patients at the Dispensary every day that it is opened, and I also have a much larger private practice than is usual at so early a date. I have not yet been established here in practice quite 9 months, and I find that I have already had about 400 visits to or from private patients, which I think you will allow shows the ‘demand’ is a real one. As you refer to the ‘general question of lady doctors’ you must allow me to say that I am quite sure it would have your support, from at any rate one point of view, if you had the least idea of the amount of preventible suffering which women bear with rather than consult men in special cases.... Now I do not care for a moment to argue whether this feeling is right or wrong; ... if the feeling exists it should be distinctly recognized as an element in the question; and I am quite sure that you would be one of the very first to desire that every possible remedy should be brought to such needless suffering. In the same way I never care to argue at all about the relative capabilities of men and women. I mean to try to do my own work up to the very best of my power, and that is all that really concerns me. I cannot imagine any work nobler or more perfectly fascinating, than that of medicine, and I am very thankful to be allowed ever so small a share in it.” To Mrs. Henry Kingsley, “I have full as much work at my Dispensary as I can manage, indeed I am pretty well used up on those days, but I always enjoy them. I am just going to begin a course of lectures which I hope may be successful. It is hard work altogether, but nothing to the old worries.” Hard work indeed it was, especially when one bears in mind that she was urged at times to undertake confinements at a very considerable distance,—as far off as Yorkshire. Moreover, being a woman, she had of course the cares of housekeeping, and S. J.-B. always took her housekeeping very seriously.[138] She was herself a good cook and an excellent manager, and her staff were expected to carry out her methods and principles loyally. If they happened to be lazy and unprincipled, or even easy-going, their tenure of office was likely to be brief. Her comfortable home—in common with all the other gifts of the gods—meant nothing to her unless she could share it. How heartfelt was her hospitality may be gathered from the following letters: “August 15th. [? 1878.] Dear Miss Irby, Welcome home again! I saw in yesterday’s paper that you had reached England, and was going to write when your letter came. I shall be delighted to see you again! I expect to be here all autumn and winter (with the exception of a few days) and shall be only too glad to have you whenever you like best to come. Only do manage to give me at least a week, and let me know which time suits you best as soon as possible, so that I may make my plans suit yours. Several people are most anxious to meet you, so I will ask them to dinner, etc., when you fix a time; but I hope you won’t accept invitations much (you are sure to have dozens) as I do want you to get a little rest while with me, and I want to take you drives about Edinburgh,—the country is so lovely. I shall tell everybody you will be too tired to go out much. Would you like a public meeting here? I daresay it would help, though most residents are away at this season. Yours affectionately, S. Jex-Blake.” “June 16th. [1879.] Dear Mrs. Thorne, I hear that your two girls are coming to Morton next week. Don’t you think it would be very wrong to let them travel so far all alone? Don’t you think it is clearly your duty to come and stay a week or two with me when you arrive? I should like so very much to see you again at something like leisure, and also to show you my Dispensary and all and sundry I am doing here. So many Edinbro’ friends would like to see you! Do try to come if only for a week or two! I remember that the ‘wonderful woman’ went to London and back for 24 hours once, so she can’t mind travelling! In haste Yours sincerely, S. Jex-Blake.” “June 18th. Dear Mrs. Thorne, I shall be really delighted if you will come down with your girls and spend a week or two with me while they are at Morton. You and I have never had any really quiet time together since our student days, and I cannot tell you how much I should enjoy some talks with you, and how glad I should be of your advice about lots of things in my Dispensary and otherwise. Dr. Sewall you know always said you were the doctor among us, and I quite believe it. I wish so very often that I could ask you about things.” To a colleague in London she writes a month or two later: “Your thanking me so much for a very moderate amount of good nature shown to Miss X., makes me wonder how you expect one to behave to people who are ill and poor. I am sure you yourself act upon the ‘aux plus dÉshÉritÉs le plus amour’ principle? Seriously I have done very little for her beyond what I should have done for anybody more or less in her position, except perhaps half a dozen drives and dinners which I promised ‘pour l’amour de vos beaux yeux' before I saw her. I am afraid you must think me a very ungrateful person in my turn, for I don’t say a quarter as much about your various kindnesses to me and my friends.” She always had a word of brave and wise advice for colleagues who appealed to her: “I am inclined to think you had better send Miss Z. off to Australia. I am sure Miss Du Pre will gladly do her part if you write to her about it. She is now at ‘Surbiton, S.W.,’—no farther address required. I think you are quite wrong to think you will ‘not forgive yourself’ if the plan does not succeed. I have long ago come to the conclusion that ‘efforts are ours, results are God’s,’—and, if you don’t like that phraseology, you can paraphrase it as you like, so long as you acquiesce in my conclusion that we are not to blame or worry ourselves if things go wrong when we have done our best. How I wish we could sit by that upstairs window and have a chat over it all!”
“No, life isn’t a bit of a failure, and you wouldn’t think so if we could get ten days’ holiday together up in the highlands!—don’t I wish we could!—for I am very tired too. I’ve got to go off to Yorkshire in a few days to attend ——’s patient.... My coachman got drunk last week, and I turned him off at an hour’s notice, and had to see to the stable myself for a day or two!—My whole household has been upside down, and in the midst of it my dear old Turk died last week, but quite quietly and without pain. I have a new page, and a new cook, and a new groom,[139] and am going to have a new housemaid,—don’t you pity me?—Still I say ‘Life is good,’—Can you have better testimony?” Her advice on occasion could be fairly drastic: “Yes,—I know about Miss W. Why do you let her stay 1½ hours with you? At the end of five minutes I should take out my watch and say,—‘Now I have just ten minutes more for you,—is there anything you want to say?’ That’s the way to treat those sort of folks. I am not ‘too good for this world.’” Here is a rather amusing answer to a question from Dr. Pechey,—“Why“Why do you recommend Vermouth?” “Dear Edie, I sent off my two cards to you too hurriedly to answer about ‘Vermouth’!—but now let me say at my leisure that I never heard anything more beautifully illustrative of the way stories are ‘evolved.’ The one and only occasion when I made acquaintance with Vermouth was when one day, during a hurried call at Mrs. Nichol’s, the dear old lady in Mr. F.’s presence, offered me some Vermouth as something new she had got, and insisted on my tasting it,—which I did, and said I thought it ‘very nice,’ as in duty bound! Neither before nor afterwards have I either seen or heard of it! It really is nice, I think,—in the orange bitters line,—but further I know nothing about it, and certainly never recommended it in my life—nor expect to. My professional life is, I find, largely a crusade against tea and alcohol, so certainly I am not likely to preach up new liqueurs—if this is one.” To Dr. Sewall she writes, “Oct. 8th. [1879.] ... I have a very charming little brougham, which my Mother gave me; and a beautiful horse, quiet as a lamb and strong as a bull, from Miss Du Pre. Altogether it is an extremely smart turn-out, and I should like so much to show it to you! I hope I shall this summer. You must come then if possible,—it is so hard to be apart so many years! I am so sorry my Father’s carriage is worn out. That little gift was such a pleasure to him and almost the last thing he did. I think the letter in which he told me he had paid the money to my bankers was the very last I had from him—dear old man!... Dr. King Chambers gave the inaugural address at our School this year, I moved the vote of thanks to him,[140] as it was my one day in London. I will try to send you a report.” Later she writes, “I have rather a sore heart today, for dear old Turk has just died in my arms.... He seemed about as usual today, but rose from where he was by the kitchen fire, walked into the scullery and fell over. They fetched me, and he gave just two gasps in my arms and died. It seems a bit of one’s life gone, when he had been in it for 13 years!—and a Boston bit too.” “Nov. 29th. 1879.... We are in great excitement here with the visit of Gladstone to Edinburgh,[141] and his speeches. I send you two papers today, to show you how he alludes in one speech to the sympathy of women with his cause,—I have written a short letter in today’s Scotsman asking if it would not be better that they should be able legitimately to express that sympathy through the Suffrage.... How I hope and trust to see you here next year!” Apparently Miss Pechey did not think Gladstone’s appreciation of women sufficiently adequate to be worth acknowledging, for a few days later S. J.-B. writes to her, “I like Gladstone much better than you do, or I shouldn’t have written as in the Scotsman, but no doubt he is wrong about women,—his wife’s fault however, I fancy. Miss Irby went to stay with them for a day or two last year, and I know he admires her hugely,—perhaps she may be a means of grace to him.” It was about this time that the opinions of a number of representative women were collected on the subject of the Suffrage. S. J.-B. at first declined to respond, but, on Miss Irby’s remonstrance she wrote the following lines, which are quoted here because they represent fairly the calm and decided attitude she took upon the subject throughout life: “If I correctly understand the British Constitution, one of its fundamental principles is that Taxation and Representation should go together, and that every person taxed should have a voice in the election of those by whom taxes are imposed. If this is a wrong principle, it should be exchanged as soon as possible for some other, so that we may know what is the real basis of representation in this country; if it is a right principle, it must admit of general application, and I am unable to see that the sex of the tax-paying householder should enter into the question at all. The argument respecting the ‘virtual representation’ of women under the present system seems to me especially worthless, as it can be answered alternatively thus:—If women as a sex have exactly the same interests as men, their votes can do no harm, and indeed will not affect the ultimate result; if they have interests more or less divergent from men, it is obviously essential that such interests should be directly represented in the councils of the nation. My own belief is that in the highest sense, the interests of the two sexes are identical, and that the noblest and most enlightened men and women will always feel them to be so; and, in that case, a country must surely be most politically healthy where all phases of thought and experience find legitimate expression in the selection of its parliamentary representatives.” As regards the medical education of women S. J.-B. never for one moment lost interest in the movement as a whole. If her hand was no longer on the helm, she never deserted her post on the bridge. A new Medical Bill was on the tapis at this time,—a Bill which—very rightly—made it essential that all doctors should hold a qualification in both medicine and surgery. As, however, no College of Surgeons would examine women (who nevertheless had gone through the required surgical training), this Bill would have had the result of placing women on a different and inferior footing to men as doctors, and the hard-won steps that had seemed to be cut in the solid rock would have melted away once more. The General Medical Council, in its suggested amendments to the Bill, proposed to establish a special Board for the examination of women, and to admit them in the end to a separate register! It was the old “strawberry jam labels” over again. Moreover in order to conform with the requirements of this Board a woman must be in a position to assert that she had received no part of her education along with men,—a requirement that at once ruled out all the women who were enjoying the great privilege of studying at the University of Paris. So there was small encouragement even now to relax that keen look-out on the bridge. In Dr. Heron Watson, who was at that time President of the Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons, S. J.-B. had a keen and sympathetic adviser, and with his approval she wrote to her former supporters, Mr. Stansfeld, Lord Aberdare, Lord Ripon and others, begging them to keep a watchful eye on the interests of the women. Early in the spring of 1878 she had urged Mrs. Anderson to write to two or three of the London daily newspapers on the subject, while she herself undertook two or three more; and on April 19th she writes again: “Dear Mrs. Anderson,—It occurs to me that it would be well for the 8 registered women to send up a distinct protest against the new Medical Bill to strengthen the hands of our friends in both Houses. I have made a rough draft of what I should propose, and enclose a copy to you, while also forwarding one to Mr. Stansfeld. Before doing anything further I shall wait to hear what you and he think about it, and whether you have any alterations to propose. If the plan is adopted, can you tell me how we can get Dr. Blackwell’s signature? There is no great hurry, as the petition need not be presented for three or four weeks. Yours truly, S. Jex-Blake.” To Mrs. Thorne she writes some months later, “I had a long talk with Dr. Watson yesterday, and he tells me the Government is likely to drop the Medical Bill for this session. I shall be rather sorry if they do. If they do not, I hope you will make a point of ‘keeping the run’ of every proposed amendment, and of watching very carefully how each may affect women. I should look out very sharp if I were in London, but here it is impossible to do so with sufficient efficiency and promptitude; so please don’t let anything slip. The matter is almost more important than School affairs, and even friendly M.P.’s are too busy to be trusted and often they don’t see the bearing of phrases. Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Cowper Temple or Dr. Cameron, could any of them get papers for you, but they need reminding.” Amid these manifold interests life ran its course in the early years of practice. The happiest times were those when Miss Du Pre came to stay with her friend, and it was the dream of S. J.-B.’s life that these visits might develop into constant companionship. No one who was not a doctor ever took a more sympathetic interest in medical questions than did Miss Du Pre: her advice in difficult social and professional problems was invaluable; and then there was her delightful sense of fun! “The only witty friend I ever had,” S. J.-B. says about this time. And, added to all was her sheer goodness and interest in the poor. “32 at Dispensary,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “One or two so hungry and forlorn that they went to my heart. Oh, dear, if only J. [Miss Du Pre] were here to do her half of the work! No motto of mine that over the Venice monastery, ‘O solitudo, sola beatitudo!’” It is needless to say that Miss Du Pre’s visits were as long and as frequent as the many other claims in her life made possible, and in her absence she entered as of old into every detail of her friend’s life. Of course this friendship could not but take in great measure the place of the old enthusiasm for Octavia Hill, though the latter never died. In May 1877 someone had told S. J.-B. of the “terrible trouble” Miss Hill was in. “Oh, dear,” she cried in her diary, “I’m ashamed of the first sort of thrill of triumph that she should know how it hurts!”[142] “My life is full and complete again,” she writes in April 1878, “if somewhat greyer for all the past pain; and, if I can have J., the former things may abide in shadow till the day of restitution of all things. I can’t but believe that some day, some where, I shall learn what it all meant,—even now one sees in some measure ‘why it could not be otherwise.’ It is at any rate a grand thing that, over and through all, each has kept on at her work and done yeoman service.” “Dear L. E. S. turned the tide, gave me back the beginning of strength and life, physical and mental, and since then for the last 12 years I have stumbled steadily onwards,—gaining in strength and calm and hope,—till at length I can feel a wholesome life of my own—quite independent of the old pain,—with a very dear hand in mine, and with a grand life of work and struggle against disease before me.” On the last night of that year she writes: “‘Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure,’ ... ‘and He shall strengthen thy heart.’... I believe profoundly in the ‘that He might be able to succour’. One does learn through pain what one never learns without,—and, hard as it is to feel it, I suppose one knows the ‘power of ministration’—the ‘Lo, I come’ is higher and more than even the personal happiness. So—take and use Thy work. What is the use of talking about presenting ourselves a ‘living sacrifice,’—and then moaning over pain,—wanting to ‘freeze on a warm night’! Oh, dear!—one’s own littleness. Well, God teach and guide us all.” A few weeks later she comes to the end of the volume, and writes in a sunnier vein: “Yet surely,—‘hitherto He has helped us’—Look at beginning of this book,—or stronger still look back some 17 years and see how the light has arisen out of darkness,—and shall it not grow and grow. I fully believe ‘God is very merciful to those who suffer young’young’. How much harder the other way. And much to be thankful for in health. No neuralgia,—very great return of brain power.... Who can look forward?—who dare plan? Domine dirige nos!” CHAPTER II
LAST ILLNESS OF MRS. JEX-BLAKE So far S. J.-B.’s success in Edinburgh had been on the whole greater than most of her friends had anticipated. The experiment could never have been made, had not Mrs. Jex-Blake agreed to spend her winters in Edinburgh. S. J.-B. was a good deal blamed by other members of the family for urging this arrangement; but it must be borne in mind that although Mrs. Jex-Blake was in fairly good general health, she was subject to sudden alarming attacks of illness which had repeatedly brought her daughter hundreds of miles in hot haste to the sick bed, regardless of the studies, or the still more important affairs she was leaving behind. Modern methods would have grappled with the illness at its source long before the patient had reached her present age, and a radical cure might have restored her to perfect health: as it was she lay under a sword of Damocles, and was regarded as a more delicate woman than she really was. It was impossible for S. J.-B. to embark on medical practice under these conditions; so the Sussex Square house was given up, and the old lady—who elected to have her own mÉnage—divided her time between her daughter in Edinburgh and her son at Rugby. “You have always been different to me from my other children,” she said to S. J.-B.; and, if she spoke with a consciousness of the sword in her heart, the words were mainly a tribute to her younger daughter’s untiring devotion, and remained in later days the source of comfort they were meant to be. Towards the end of April 1881 Mrs. Jex-Blake went south, leaving her daughter more reluctantly than usual. It was only those who knew S. J.-B. very intimately who were at all aware of the effort it sometimes cost her to get through each “day’s darg,” and to keep a bright face turned to her patients and a brave face to the world at large. She was more tired than usual at the end of that winter, and Mrs. Jex-Blake was well aware of this. The usual series of love letters passed between Mother and daughter: “Eastfield, April 30th. [1881]. Own Darling, I am really well, but feel only half of myself without you. I am very good,—I sleep well, eat well—two hot dinners a day,—but, as I was very tired, keep my room, it is so much easier to be quiet there. Florence quite mothers me.... You may be sure Dobbs is most attentive—and backs anything she advises with the “4 Manor Place, Edinburgh. May 1st. ... Many thanks for your dear little letters, but you mustn’t scribble too much to anybody!—Such sweet leaves in today’s note! Yes, my darling, I miss my dear old lady very much, but we are both going to be very good, and get quite strong for our reunion in September. I shall be very grateful to you if you keep up your ‘two hot dinners’ honestly, and all the rest of it.... It breaks my heart to find you run down as I do year after year when I come to fetch you back again. I don’t know exactly when Ursula comes, but you will hear from her. Dr. M‘Laren is back,[143] and so vexed to have missed saying ‘Goodbye’! Towards the end of June Mrs. Jex-Blake was less well, but the doctor who attended her saw no cause for anxiety. On the 28th, however, alarming indications of the old enemy showed themselves suddenly, and he telegraphed to S. J.-B. to come immediately. There was one more rush south “on eagle’s wings,” but fortunately this time S. J.-B. had the companionship of Miss Du Pre, with whom she reached Rugby at 2 a.m. The patient had been given up by the doctor and by all, and even S. J.-B., when she saw her, thought she was dying; but she fought for the precious life with every fibre of her being, refusing to own defeat and absolutely regardless of her own health. For ten days and nights she scarcely left the room. The doctor in attendance was only too glad that she should have a free hand, and after a few days they sent for Dr. King Chambers, in whose skill S. J.-B. had almost unlimited faith. His visit proved reassuring. “Her life hung so evenly on the balance when I left,” he wrote next day, “that I was obliged to acknowledge to myself that my trust in her recovery was a sanguine one. Please one line about her, and, if it is a favourable one, I shall answer it by a little advice to yourself, which you will in that case be in a condition to take.” On July 7th all looked well, and S. J.-B. felt the wonderful supporting power of hope, but, on the following day, there was a sudden turn for the worse, and at half past six in the evening, the patient passed quietly away.
The event is recorded in the diary by a great sheaf of blank pages, with a pathetic notice from the Times in the middle of them. That is all, but constantly for a year, intermittently for many years, the diary recurs to the old longings and regrets, the gropings and questionings, the heart-searching and tears, that have followed every great bereavement. The reader of the preceding pages will not need to be told that S. J.-B. drank the cup to the dregs. There were not a few who had lost in Mrs. Jex-Blake their dearest friend, but everyone’s first thought was of her younger daughter. “I do hope,” writes that wise Heron Watson, “that you are not overborne by over much sorrow.” “No human being loses what I do in her,” S. J.-B. wrote to her friend, James Cordery, and this was perfectly true. No one had loved her Mother as she had; no one else had the same cause; and no one else had the same appalling capacity for suffering. It is interesting to note that of many beautiful letters of sympathy there is not one that strikes the reader as more truly comprehending than does Mrs. Anderson’s: “4 Upper Berkeley Street, W. July 13th, 1881. Dear Miss Jex-Blake, I have seen with very great regret the notice of your sorrow. Knowing as I do how very close and tender was the tie between you and your Mother and also what a fine and ennobling influence she must have been to all within her range I am very full of sympathy for you. It is always very sad to break away from the past by losing one of these main links with it, but in your case there is very much to increase your sense of this. You have not (as so many others unhappily allow themselves to do) outlived the tenderness of the relationship. I hope that after a time it will be a comfort to you to remember this and to recal how happy she was in having so much affection from you. I was very sorry to find I had written on business last Sunday at such a time. Yours very truly, E. G. Anderson.” S. J.-B.’s own letters are calm and restrained, of course. To her assistant in Edinburgh she writes, “July 11th. ... Thanks for your kind note, and [your Mother’s] kind thoughtfulness. But nothing would grieve me more than needlessly to part a Mother and daughter who still have each other, and I beg her to remain with you at least as arranged until the end of this month during which time I shall almost certainly remain here and try to get rested. It was a hard battle,—it was bitter to fail just when we seemed winning, but I believe it was her wish to go. On Thursday I heard her murmur quietly, ‘Oh, Father, I pray Thee take me home,’—and now all is peace. Yours sincerely, S. J.-B.” About the work in Edinburgh S. J.-B. had no anxiety at all. It was her way, when she trusted people, to trust them whole-heartedly, and she had absolute confidence in the assistant who had worked with her for more than a year. Well, indeed, she might, for she was extraordinarily fortunate in that gallant-hearted and faithful young helper, whose only fault seems to have been that she threw herself too completely, too conscientiously, into everything she undertook,—her chief’s work and interests, together with her own studies and laboratory experiments.[144] S. J.-B. never realised what a responsibility her very trust was to one wholly worthy of it. In any case the double burden on the young shoulders proved too great, and there was a sudden and tragic breakdown ending in death. One wonders how S. J.-B. bore the double shock. She had fancied herself “girt with the girdle of him who has nought,” when the second blow fell. She always said herself that she never could have won through but for Miss Du Pre, who simply carried her off to quiet places and tended her and brought her gradually back to the possibility of beginning again. The practice in Edinburgh was given up for the time. There was nothing else to be done. Miss Ellaby took up the threads and finished them off as well as a stranger might; but there was no medical woman free to remain and fill the niche. It was hard on the practice.
In later years S. J.-B. met Mr. Frederick Myers, and she was induced by her impression of him to read his Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, when it appeared some time later. She was deeply interested in the book, and her mind was open on the subject always; but she “tried the spirits” severely. “No human being,” she said one day in the course of an earnest talk, “could strive to come into touch with one gone before more earnestly than I tried to come into touch with my Mother. I used to lie awake at night concentrating every faculty on the effort. But I got no response.” Her diary became her great outlet again in those dark days, in some places almost, as of old, a very cento of beautiful or poignant thoughts from the treasure-house of her memory; but that was never the side she turned to the world, though intimate friends got glimpses of it that startled them. One guessed it too from her anxiety to spare others the pain she had suffered herself. “Don’t you ever go through the farce, dear, of thinking you haven’t been good to me,” she said to a friend years after this; and, although throughout life she often spoke hastily and over-sharply, she never spoke a word that might poison the night-watches for those she left behind. Coventry Patmore’s terrible poem[145] could never have been inspired by her. To one of her nieces she writes: Dear ——, I found the enclosed treasured among Grandmamma’s most valued papers, and I am sure you will like to have it back and to see how she kept and cared for it through so many years.... I think all your life it will be a pleasure to you remember how much you added to her happiness and helped to take care of her during the last few years. She always said you were ‘a little mother’ to her. Your affec. aunt, S. J.-B.” CHAPTER III
PATIENTS AND FRIENDS It was hard to go back to the house in Manor Place, so full of associations, and, as soon as might be, S. J.-B. and Miss Du Pre removed to Bruntsfield Lodge, a roomy, rambling old house[146] with a shady, high-walled garden, standing high on the south side of Edinburgh, overlooking Bruntsfield Links. The sunny rooms and the possibility of stepping out into quiet greenness were worth a fortune to the strained nerves and over-active brain. “You will be glad to hear that I am much stronger,” S. J.-B. writes to Dr. Sewall in September 1883, “and am sleeping excellently. I have just begun also to take short rides, and I do not think they tire me too much.” Here then she began the life of comparative seclusion and active beneficence which was to last for sixteen years. The keynote of her existence was sharing, taking others with her, and the joy of sharing this comfortable house and garden was very great. Miss Du Pre’s absence is the occasion for some playful letters written quite in a patriarchal spirit: “August 25th. [1883.] ... I have had an addition to my family as well as Mrs. B.,—though it isn’t yet in the Times first column,—viz. a delightfully comic small dog, white with one black eye, whom I have christened Toby, and whom I bought from the Home for Lost Dogs for the large sum of 2s. 6d. The police take stray dogs there, and if no one claims them, or buys them, they are killed; so this little fellow has escaped by the skin of his teeth, in virtue of his supposed excellences in the cat-chasing line![147] Has cottoned up to me most amusingly—followed me about all day, and whined at the door when shut out.... The two boys are delighted, of course,—especially A., who declares Mr. Toby to be the moral of a dog for whom his late master ‘wouldn’t take £100.’ Nice profit wouldn’t it be if I clear £99. 17s. 6d.! Lest the household should be too full, I have sent off a member,—viz., White Angel, to grass for a week at Currie,—H. being so overjoyed at being let ride him out that cook declared he ‘couldn’t eat his lunch‘! He walked back (6 miles) in 1¾ hr., not bad, was it? Miss A. is coming tonight,—Mrs. J. went this afternoon. By the bye on Thursday she asked me to ‘see Baby for a minute,’ and I found the child white and out of sorts, rather feverish, etc., and overjoyed Mrs. J. by prescribing ‘a little Bruntsfield’. So she has been out here for 2 days, tumbling in the hay and delighting Ann’s heart. She is so fond of children. I also sent Mrs. S. off to Brackenrigg yesterday, as I decided she did want a change before beginning a winter’s work. The fare was 17s. 4d., and I gave her the rest of £4, which will pay everything for 10 days, with 5s. or 6s. to spare. I haven’t heard from her yet, but I am sure she will be in the seventh heaven. Probably she will see Miss Anthony there,—she went the previous day.... I think it was very good of you to ask for the Baring votes!...” “Sept. 4th. ... Mrs. S. lunched here today, and says she feels infinitely better for the change,—things no longer worry her in the same way. She tells me that the red-room gentleman was back,[148]—and that being confined to bed one day, he evidently heard Miss Anthony haranguing on Women’s Rights in the next room,—and Mrs. W. told them that he had asked ‘when those two ladies were going,—for he heard enough to know they were men-haters, and he was a woman hater!” “Sept. 9th. I’ve had another addition to my family,—not a permanent one this time! A. J. was very anxious not to catch scarlet fever so as to be thrown back for his examinations, etc., and so I have taken him in for a few days, and given him ——’s room upstairs. (Do you think W. is in any danger?) He seems a very nice lad, but by no means strong. He is so very pleased with the quiet,—he says he can sleep so much better. Now a lad of his age ought to be able to sleep in any row!” “Sept. 13th. ... The grapes are getting on famously, some will be ripe within a week I think, but they will be rather small this year.” “Sept. 23rd. You needn’t have asked so meekly for ‘2 or 3 grapes’. We have cut none yet, but when they first began to colour, the most forward bunch was dubbed ‘Miss Du Pre’s,’—and for the last 10 days the household might be seen every morning with upturned chins gazing to see ‘if Miss Du Pre’s bunch is ready’,—H. going up the ladder and hanging in all sorts of odd positions to look at it all round. The combined wisdom has decided to cut it tomorrow—in spite of a red berry or two which won’t get right,—so probably you will get it on Wednesday morning by P.P. Be sure to tell me how it travels.” The first few months in the new house were a time of comparative leisure, and S. J.-B.’s friends received letters less telegraphic in their succinctness than they afterwards tended to become. The following is to Mrs. Brander, who (when Miss Isobel Bain) had accompanied S. J.-B. to America: “Sept. 26th. [1883.] Dearest Bel, I wish you could peep in and see my new house now that it is fairly in order. I think the quiet and airiness will be of very great value to me. I have felt much better since I came here.... You have so often wished for good medical women in India that you must now be pleased to have your wish granted. I don’t know if you know Mrs. Scharlieb who is just entering on practice at Madras, but, if you don’t, I wish you would go and call on her, and give my card. I do not know her personally, but I have corresponded with her, and respect her much for the gallant way in which she got her education, first at Madras and then coming to England to perfect herself. She passed the very difficult examinations of the University of London (M.B. and B.S.) with great distinction, and won the gold medal in Obstetrics from the whole University.... Have you heard also that Dr. Edith Pechey is going to settle at Bombay? She has been invited to do so by a committee of native gentlemen, who guarantee her an income and find her a hospital.... I am very sorry to lose her from England, but very glad to have so admirable a representative in India. She always wins golden opinions and does such excellent work. I do hope the Government will do something for her. I have just written to Lord Ripon about her. You know I suppose that Mr. Fawcett has appointed a medical woman (Miss Shove) as medical officer to the women post office clerks, with £350 a year. It is an immense step in public opinion. I am getting on very well here, but I begin to feel I am getting old. My hair is so grey!... Dear old Mrs. Brander came to see me the other day, looking as nice as ever, ... I think I care more and more for old people’s happiness as compared to young, though the world is hard enough for them too sometimes,—and hardest of all I sometimes think for the middle-aged folks who have outlived the spring and energy of youth and not reached the calm of age. How much pain one sees in the world! I hope your life is getting easier and happier every year, dear child. Tell me all about yourself some day.... Yours affectionately, S. J.-B.” She was planning a new edition of her book, Medical Women, at this time, and she wrote to Mr. Osler to ask for statistics as to the percentage of women, as compared with men, who had so far passed the examinations of the University of London. In reply to his information she writes: “Feb. 3rd. 1884. Dear Mr. Osler, I can hardly express strongly enough how grateful I am both to you and to Mr. Milman, for the very valuable tables of numbers sent me.... Please do not doubt for a moment that I quite agree with you that it is unfair to compare ‘picked women’ (i.e. really in earnest) and ‘unpicked men’. I have said so repeatedly. But you must remember that a very few years ago I had a very hard fight to get it admitted as a possibility that some women might do as good work as men. In ‘Visits to American Schools’ (published 1867) I wrote with at least sufficient diffidence,—‘Whether most women would be capable of the amount of study required, for instance, for one of our University degrees, I really do not know,’ etc. My one contention has been all along,—‘Give a fair field and try’—and no one can exaggerate the gratitude that all women ought to feel to the University of London for giving that field. At the same time, while quite conceding that ‘percentages’ need correction by certain considerations on the men’s side,—youth, want of choice, etc.,—you must not forget that women are quite as much weighted in other ways,—e.g. by the greater reluctance of parents to spend money on their education, and the more inconsiderate claims made on their time, etc., at home, inferior early teaching, etc., so that after all one set of difficulties go far to balance another. From a medical point of view my chief anxiety now is how women are going to stand the strain; I am very much afraid of seeing the movement discredited by the breakdown in health of girls who begin too young, or with inadequate physical stamina, or who try to ‘burn the candle at both ends’ by combining society or home duties with serious study. However, I must not trespass longer on your time and kind patience, and with repeated thanks, I remain, Yours very gratefully, S. Jex-Blake.” This subject of the education of girls had been brought prominently before her mind by the breakdown of a rarely gifted young friend. S. J.-B. had some great talks on the subject with Miss Buss and others, and she wrote to various papers about the danger of over-pressure. “The headmistresses have a difficult problem before them,” she says, “but it has got to be faced.” As a matter of fact the problem was destined to be solved abundantly in due course by the development of games and physical culture generally,—all that side of life for the lack of which she herself had suffered so terribly. She was specially interested, of course, in the daughters of her old friends, and, of these, Hermione Unwin and Katie Ballantyne held a special place in her regard. To the former she writes: “July 29th. 1884. My dear Hermie, Thank you for sending me your examination papers. I am very glad that you passed so successfully. What now interests me most is to know to what use all this work is to be turned, for after all knowledge is noblest when it becomes an instrument of work beyond itself. Have you any tastes or wishes, or any thought of any special kind of work? I daresay that after all this study the best thing you can do is to rest on your oars for six months or a year, but during that time I hope you will be thinking in what way you can turn yourself to best account. There is so much that needs doing in the world, and it is such a privilege to help in the doing of it. I hope you will write and tell me when you have any definite thoughts on the subject. I have already had my holiday for this year, having spent June in driving about (with the white pony) in the Perthshire highlands with my friend, Miss Du Pre. I think there is hardly any kind of holiday that rests one so much. You should persuade your Father to take you all in a waggonette, a long drive into Scotland or to the English Lakes. If you should decide on Scotland, I should hope to find this house used as a stopping-place. I think I could take you all in pretty comfortably. Remember me very kindly to Mr. Unwin, and believe me Yours very truly, S. Jex-Blake.” Here is an interesting letter to an old friend whose husband’s distinguished career separated her for the time from a dearly-loved daughter: “I much enjoyed seeing her for the flying visit which was all she vouchsafed me, and I am delighted to see how very much she is improved,—very much more healthy in mind and body all round.... She amused me much by plunging headlong into some theological difficulties,—which reminded me of how she (aged 6!) used to harass you about the Trinity. Her great trouble seems to be that she can’t feel sure the world is governed by a beneficent and omnipotent God,—she thinks there is so much pain in it which wouldn’t be allowed unless God either didn’t wish to help it, or couldn’t help it. That has never been my difficulty,—I have always had such a devout belief in the possible blessing of pain,— ‘Because all noblest things are born In agony.’ Do you remember Miss Cobbe’s hymn? However she asked me if I felt sure the world was governed, etc., and I said frankly that I hadn’t absolutely made up my mind,—that it seemed to me we had very small means of being ‘sure’ of anything,—but that I thought, if there was a Ruler both good and all powerful, it was at least perfectly conceivable that He might allow all the pain, etc., partly because the very theory of free will involved possibilities of evil with its consequences which not even Omnipotence could avert, and partly because He might see that pain was at any given moment the very best thing for the person who suffered it. Then she went off to,—Did I think it possible that any Being could follow out the lives of millions of creatures at once, etc.,—to which I said that certainly I couldn’t conceive how it should be possible; but neither could I conceive many other things that yet we knew to be scientific truths,—e.g. that our whole earth could be swallowed up in one of the ‘spots’ of the sun, and not fill up the spot, and that that very sun is only a unit in a myriad of worlds whose immensities simply reduce us to silence. However I didn’t mean to inflict a rÉchauffÉ of all this upon you, though I think you will like to know how the child’s mind is working. Let it work!—being in a wholesome atmosphere of love and labour, she will learn all sorts of practical replies to theoretical difficulties, and come to no harm.” Interesting, as bearing on the above, is another letter written to someone else about the same time: “It is a double principle with me never to bring forward theological questions, and never to seek to change the opinions of anyone who is satisfied with his or her own; and on the other hand to be always ready to say exactly what I think myself about any given point to any intelligent person who cares to ask me the question, and to say frankly where I feel that I know nothing. I do not think anyone can possibly be more conscious than I of the immense vastness and difficulty of questions that the general public answer glibly offhand, and of my own utter incompetency to decide in the abstract ‘what is truth’. Practically I think one is generally able to see one’s own duty day by day, and probably Browning is right— ‘... more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act tomorrow what he learns today.’ Beyond that, I suppose that all that any of us can do is to be very chary of either asserting or denying, but to strive to keep our whole souls open to every ray of light we can get, and hope some day to learn everything that it is needful for us to know. Personally I am always getting to feel that opinions matter less and less, and motives and feelings more and more. Excuse this long dissertation and believe me, Yours sincerely, S. Jex-Blake.” In December 1885 she writes to Miss Du Pre: “Yes, we shall miss poor old X. sadly. It does seem pathetic, doesn’t it?—and yet don’t you think it is something to be taken away just when you have attained your highest ambition?... The first thing I thought,—as it almost always is,—was, I wonder what he thinks now that he ‘knows what Rhamses knows’. It always does strike me so very curiously when someone who has never, I suppose, thought half as much as I about the mysteries of life and death, goes in in front of me,—if there is any ‘going in’. I thought it so very strongly about Vanderbilt. How will he get on where everything isn’t reckoned as on the Stock Exchange?” Although the new house was certainly not in a central position, S. J.-B.’s practice steadily grew. As the first woman doctor in Scotland, she had, as she had told Sir Thomas Barlow, numerous cases that had long gone untreated, and she was the recipient of many a pent-up confidence. The Edinburgh that criticized her would have been surprised if it had known some of the secrets that lay, so safely, in her keeping. She was often called upon to be a Mother Confessor, and, although she always declared that “one profession is enough for one person,” her practice was by no means so rigid in this respect as was her theory. Many strange problems were discussed in that quiet consulting-room, with its book-lined walls and green spaces outside. To the end of life her impulsiveness led her into mistakes for which she had to suffer, but her advice to others was extraordinarily sane and good. Yet the idealist in her never slept. “I took Colani from the shelf,” she says on one occasion, “and read, ‘Cast thyself down,—for the devil can suggest; compel can he never.’” She was often asked, too, to take a resident patient who wished to have her own suite of rooms and sometimes her own attendant. More than one of these patients became personal friends. She of course received high fees for cases of this kind, but she often had resident patients who paid no fees at all. Some governess who could not get well in dreary lodgings would be simply wrapped up in blankets and carried off in the brougham—or was it on a comet’s tail?—a messenger having been sent up to the house,—“Have blue room ready in half-an-hour. Am bringing patient.”[149] “I wonder,” writes a patient at this time, “if you have any idea how pleasant it is to be lifted on somebody’s shoulders and carried away from the shadows of your own life into the brightness of theirs. No I do not think you can have; you do not seem to have dwelt in the shadows.” And another writes, “I know you will believe me when I say that I have rarely, if ever, been so supremely happy as during the past few weeks. The feeling of peace and comfort was so delicious, and I only wish I could prove myself just a little worthy of all I have enjoyed.” We have seen how on one occasion she took in a lad who could not afford to risk incurring the infection of scarlet fever. On another occasion, when visiting a patient, she was asked to see a boy of ten, who had unluckily fallen ill while paying a short visit to the house. His hostess did not understand boys, and he was having an uncomfortable time. His plight roused all the boy—and there was plenty of it—in S. J.-B. She carried him off, mothered him, took him for drives when she could, got him well, and apparently made him happy. At all events, when the time came to say Goodbye, he flung his arms round her neck and kissed her! There are some men who are born with an instinctive knowledge of the right thing to do in unusual circumstances. Most useful was the comet’s tail in cases where some overworked brain was on the point of a breakdown, where a worry was developing into an idÉe fixe, and threatening to drive the patient mad. S. J.-B. would carry the patient off, regardless of possible developments more disconcerting even than an outbreak of scarlet fever in her house, tend her, feed her up, make her sleep, sympathize with her, bully her, laugh at her, till the patient was ready to fall into line and laugh at herself. Some of these “cures” were extraordinarily rapid and complete, and there is no record of a single failure. from a photograph by M. G. T.Emery Walker ph.sc.
Sophia Jex-Blake She never heard of any over-weighted woman or child without asking herself whether she could lift the burden. “Dear Carry,”—she writes to her sister about this time—“... I don’t like the idea of our teacher looking ‘pale and anxious’,—do you know if she has any special troubles?—or is likely to be short of money? Has she relations with whom she spends her holidays? or is she at Bettws now?—When do the holidays begin and end? What pay has she now?—Has it been raised lately?—What is her name and nation? A sad number of questions, but very short replies will suffice. Your aff. sister, S. J.-B.” It was partly because she had so many guests of this kind that she made it an absolute rule that none of her servants were to receive gratuities from visitors,—a rule that some of the visitors disliked extremely, and even refused to submit to. Such cases sometimes led to an amusing breeze of correspondence of which the following is a sample: “Sir, Well acquainted as I am with your many and great iniquities, I confess that I did not expect you wantonly to abuse our humble hospitality by deliberately inciting our household to rebellion against constituted authority as distinctly announced to you by written warning on the mantel-piece.[150] Manifold as are the notorious vices of the Conservative mind, I had supposed it to have some slight reverence for law, national or domestic. In future I shall know better. Sir, the humble but incorruptible member of my household whose integrity you sought to corrupt, begs me to re-inclose to you the accompanying lucre (2s. 6d.), of whose history you so falsely pretended yourself ignorant, and as I see no reason why I should be impoverished in consequence of your evil doings, I request you to repay me on your return from the continent the commission charged by H.M. Government (viz. ½d.) upon the enclosed remittance. I am Sir, Yours more in sorrow than in anger, S. J.-B.” The postal order was indignantly returned, with a request to do what she liked with it, so she at once sent it to the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, directing the secretary to forward the receipt to her refractory Conservative guest! Notwithstanding this, and other differences of opinion, he paid many more visits to her house, and for the future contrived usually, at least, to elude her vigilance. She used to consult him in all sorts of legal difficulties, and he replied with unfailing patience. “Dear James,”—she wrote on one occasion,—“I want to make a codicil, leaving some money to ..., the income to her for life,—the capital between her daughters. Will you please tell me the simplest words in which I can do this?” In sending a rough draft, he inserted the words,—“if only one such daughter.” “Of course I can put in ‘if only one such daughter,’ if you like,” she replied, “but at present there are seven!” The initial mistake, of course, was hers, and it was a kind of mistake that was very unusual with her. Her correspondence was very large,—so large that she never had time to write a “proper letter about ‘Shakespeare and the musical glasses’,” as she would have said. To her most intimate friends she wrote with spontaneous charm,—letters circumstantial, tender, nonsensical, as the case might be. “Do you ever write any letters that would look well in your memoir?” asks Miss Du Pre. “I begin to be anxious about that book. It seems to me that it will be so fearfully dull,—unless your diaries ... prove to be amusing.” On the other hand, strangers consulted her about manifold schemes and perplexities, and she always asked herself how she could help. “Dear Madam,” wrote one of these, “As you sit alone in the evening with the curtains drawn, imagine that a woman steals into your room, hunted to death by men. I am that woman....” Even this sensational beginning did not put S. J.-B. off, and it was weeks before she allowed herself to be persuaded—by Dr. Pechey and Miss Du Pre—that the case was one for Dr. Clouston rather than for her.
But it was in her Dispensary, with working women and girls, that one saw her, perhaps, at her best. She was so vital, so sympathetic, yet so full of humour and common sense that the regular provident patients were devoted to her. They knew there was nothing to be gained by arguing. “Well, I must just take my scolding,” they would say resignedly. So keenly did she sympathize with their difficulty in following out her directions in their own homes that in 1885 she added a few beds to the Dispensary, and thus formed the nucleus of the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children, which has since grown to great things and has been honoured by a visit from the Queen. Where the case was serious, and the remedy lay in the husband’s hands, S. J.-B. always took the bull by the horns. “Ask him to come and have a little talk with me,” she would say breezily. “Tell him I can see him at such and such hours.” And he would come! She was admirably fitted for work of this kind. No woman was ever more strictly fair. An injured husband was no less—and no more—sure of her sympathy than was an injured wife. And, of course, it was the old and feeble who at once found the radiant side of her. “The thanks and blessings of old J. G.—85—bring a rush of tears,—‘Ah, somebody be good to my old lady!’ And yet I suppose she may be ‘old’ no longer, but young and strong and bright, and sorry for my weakness and weariness,— ‘waits on the hills of Paradise For her children’s coming feet.’” She seldom rose quite above this sense of effort and weariness, though few would have guessed it. “I always get so much good from being with you,” writes Lady Jenkinson,—“body and soul—especially soul.... I wish you would ’fess when you feel downcast.” In her inmost circle, of course, she did ’fess, pretty often. “Not strong enough for the place, John,” she used often to quote whimsically from Punch. And here is an interesting bit of heresy in a letter to Dr. Sewall— “I don’t at all agree by the bye with your theory that ‘there is nothing like work for producing real happiness.’ I don’t find that it has even any tendency to produce it, though of course one must work if one is able. ‘Otherwise she drops at once below the dignity of man,’—so says Aurora Leigh. To quote Mrs. Browning again,—‘What’s the best thing in the world?—Something out of it I think.’” The reader will not need to be told that the poetry of her nature had not been crushed out by that long fight. Far from it. All through the strenuous days she had been supported by the very poems she had repeated by the fireside in Sussex Square, but the store had grown till her repertory must have been nearly unique. To many passages from the Psalms and Isaiah, George Herbert, Trench, Alford and others, she had added a harvest from Whittier, Emerson, Lowell and divers less known American poets. She loved her Tennyson and Browning too—Abt Vogler and Rabbi Ben Ezra—but indeed the “poetry book-case” included a very catholic range, from Macaulay’s Lays to Swinburne and Christina Rossetti, with a corner for Jean Ingelow and for Mrs. Hamilton King. We have seen the store she set in her youth on some of Sadie’s Poems. No one who has ever heard it will forget how the “pathetic voice” would repeat: “Is it so, O Christ in Heaven, that the highest suffer most? That the strongest wander farthest, and more hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?— ‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.‘” or again, “No, no, by all the martyrs, and the dear dead Christ; By the long bright roll of those whom joy enticed With her myriad blandishments, but could not win. Who would fight for victory, but would not sin. By these our elder brothers who have gone before, And have left their trail of light upon our shore. We can see the glory of a seeming shame, We can feel the fulness of an empty name.” It was recitations like this that formed the nucleus of the “incomparable evenings in the Doctor’s Study” to which Dr. Lillie Saville referred (see pp. 390-1, footnote). When life was not too exacting—and sometimes when it was—such evenings were very frequent, and they were a great refreshment after the burden and heat of the day.
She derived much relaxation, too, from the best of the unceasing current that flows through the circulating libraries. Her brief criticisms of books are often interesting. She was disappointed in George Eliot’s Life, because the long series of letters was not sufficiently welded together by narrative. Of the Carlyles she agreed with Mrs. Oliphant that “there was a great deal of love on both sides,—with very raw nerves.” Of two books she confessed to Miss Du Pre that she “sobbed over them like a baby,”—one was Laetus Sorte Mea, the other The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen. CHAPTER IV
PUBLIC LIFE It is not to be supposed that the “cataracts and breaks” were a thing of the past. There were many who found S. J.-B. a delightful person to work with, but even they had no difficulty in seeing how it was that others had a different experience. “But the Doctor is nearly always right,” said one of her assistants in later years, “when she differs from other people.” And this was perfectly true. She was nearly always right; but the few times she was wrong were sufficient in many quarters to give the dog the proverbial “bad name.” Moreover, one must frankly admit that her rightness was often too uncompromising, too business-like, too far in advance of what other people could be expected to agree with, too inconsiderate of ordinary human frailty. “You treat other people like pawns,” Miss Du Pre used to tell her, but, although she quoted the remark, she never seemed really to grasp it. During the first few years of her life at Bruntsfield Lodge she took a great interest in local women’s questions. She was a moving spirit in the organization of one or two large suffrage meetings, and in the laborious propagandism and canvassing involved in the election of women as poor law guardians. Evidence of the thoroughness of her work persists to this day; but it was not always appreciated by the Edinburgh ladies who coÖperated with her. They thought her so big and masterful that nobody else got a chance. It was just as well that her own special work absorbed her more and more. In 1884 she had written for Macmillan (at the instigation of her friend Mrs. S. R. Gardiner) a useful little book on The Care of Infants, which was warmly received by the profession and by a considerable public, and she was steadily taking notes for a second edition of her Medical Women, which should bring the narrative down to the date of publication. Public affairs, too, demanded their share of interest. That weary Medical Bill kept cropping up at intervals, and S. J.-B. was often appealed to privately by members of parliament and others for information and advice. They were well aware, of course, that her main interest was to safeguard the rights and privileges of women, but they also knew something of her mental acumen and thoroughness of method. Moreover, she was unconnected with any of the great vested interests which constituted the great stumbling block in the way of any Bill. There is a telegram extant addressed to her by the President of the Edinburgh College of Physicians who had gone up to London to watch the debate,—“Please wire Mr. Stansfeld to be sure to be here in time to secure dropping of bill proposed.” Towards the end of 1884, the Edinburgh Extra-Mural School made an effort towards incorporation, and memorialized the Privy Council to grant them a Charter. S. J.-B. was anxious to take advantage of this opportunity to raise again the question of the admission of women to medical education in Scotland, especially as, by this time, the various missionary bodies were quite alive to the importance of the subject. “The Free Church are also willing to move,” she writes to Mr. Stansfeld on November 20th, “and they wish to memorialize the Privy Council direct, and to request that any Charter granted may not exclude women, but make it at least optional for the College to admit them. To my intense amusement the request has just come to me that I will ‘draft’ such a memorial, but I have not the remotest idea how even to address the Privy Council!” It was not only the Free Church that asked her help. The lecturers, mindful of her power of enlisting the sympathy of statesmen in the past, also begged her to use her influence in high quarters, and, through the National Association, to present a petition to the Privy Council. Mr. Stansfeld was helpful as ever, advising her to interview Lord Carlingford, from whom she had a gracious reception. “But the primary condition must be,” she writes to Dr. Littlejohn, “that the Charter distinctly commits the College to the admission of women on equal terms. If this is not approved, the whole thing falls to the ground.” The reader of the foregoing chapters might not unnaturally be prepared to hear that the College was duly incorporated, and that the women were left in the lurch; but it was the unexpected that happened. The effort of the Extra-Mural School to achieve incorporation failed, but the examining bodies for which the School existed, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, decided a few months later to admit women. We may reasonably suppose that the renewed discussion of the whole question had not been in vain, but, so far as S. J.-B. was concerned, it was a case of the seed cast into the ground, which springs and grows up “he knoweth not how.” On March 17th, 1885, she writes to Dr. Pechey: “Meanwhile I have two splendid pieces of news to send you, if they have not yet reached you,—viz. (1) The Irish College of Surgeons has not only opened all its examinations, and even its fellowships, to women, but also all the classes in its School,—making separate arrangements for Practical Anatomy only. (2) More wonderful still, the Scottish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh and Glasgow (now combined to give one ‘Triple Qualification’) have decided without a division to throw open all their examinations to women. I am exceedingly surprised, for though I heard an application had been made, I thought there was little hope of success, and took no trouble about it. However, so it is, and I hope to have classes opened in the Extra-Mural School (and perhaps in connection with St. Andrews) next winter. Somebody has left St. Andrews (subject to a life interest) a legacy of £50,000 on condition of admitting women. So you see all round ‘Pigs is looking up.’ Mrs. Russel was here for a few days a fortnight ago, and is as nice as ever.” This great advance gave a fresh impetus and point to the publication of Medical Women,[151] which was duly achieved a few months later. It called forth a great sheaf of congratulatory letters from those who remembered the old days. “Of course,” wrote Dr. King Chambers, “future generations will think it necessary to season your arguments with the traditionary grain of salt; but the facts are so clearly and calmly stated that they will be accepted absolutely. As to the character of the movement itself, the future must give it.” “I am glad I was always a steady, if humble, adherent to the side of justice before its cause was popular,” wrote Professor Charteris. “I hope that you will long and increasingly enjoy the position that you had such a hard fight to win. You got all the buffets for many a day.” And Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: “I am sorry that we have lost you from London. We much need that combination of unselfish activity and wise combination of practical qualities which we find in no other of the leaders of the movement.” “What a change,” says Dr. Heron Watson, “has come over the spirit of the Medical Corporation since the story of your efforts in the cause first appeared.” And this—finally—is from a generous letter from the Revd. William Pechey: “If Edith is entitled to the praise of having borne, as you say, ‘an excellent part’ in the movement you narrate, she would, I am sure, be the first to join me in saying that you alone can fairly say: ‘Quorum maxima pars fui.’” But the mention of Dr. Pechey’s name reminds one of a delightful letter she forwarded from her little friend Rukhmabai (now Dr. Rukhmabai) who, needless to say, was not one of those who remembered the old days. “Girgaum, “23rd June, 1886. My dear Miss Pechey, I herewith return ... one of your books (The Roman Singer), with many thanks. I looked it all over just enough to know the purport of the story, which I found contains nothing but mere love matters. I shall return the other book (Medical Women) in a few days. It is so very interesting to me that I don’t like to drop a single word of it while reading. It gives me a great comfort as I see the truth won the victory at last, though you had to suffer so much even in a country like Europe. I would never have believed if some common person were to tell me, that the people there were so against to allow women to study medicine.... Yours affectionately, Rukhmabai.” S. J.-B. was interested too at this time in the development of a volume for the publication of which she had been responsible in the first instance,—that most useful gazetteer, The Englishwoman’s Year Book,—the success of which has unhappily never been comparable to its merits: and she continued to advise and help the first editor, her friend, Miss Louisa Hubbard. In 1886 she was asked to deliver one of a series of Health Lectures in Edinburgh, and of course she consented gladly,—her special lecture being addressed to women only. The lectures were free, and the lecturers unpaid. When arrangements were far advanced, she found that the Committee proposed to charge one shilling for admittance to her lecture, and she promptly rebelled. She wanted all her Dispensary patients and all their friends to come and hear what she had to say, and the charge seemed to her to do away with more than half the good of her lecture. It was represented to her that a charge was also to be made for the corresponding lecture to men only, but she did not consider the cases identical. In any case the men’s lecture was no affair of her’s. Mrs. Trayner (afterwards Lady Trayner) was an important person on that committee, and she and Lord Trayner had a great respect and cordial regard for S. J.-B. They understood her, and they wanted other people to understand her too. They were most anxious that she should waive her objection to the shilling charge, partly and especially because she was coÖperating in the matter of the Health Lectures with men doctors, and they—the Trayners—wanted her to show herself gracious and conciliatory. S. J.-B.’s reply to Mrs. Trayner’s letter is characteristic of her attitude at that time: “Pray thank Lord Trayner warmly for his kind interest in me and the medical women generally. I think, however, that he somewhat over-estimates the importance of what the men doctors may think one way or the other. You and he will remember that all that we have gained has been gained in the teeth of nearly all of them, and if they have failed to hinder me hitherto, they are certainly powerless to hurt me now.... I am willing enough to shake hands with them if they wish it, but you must remember that it is I and not they who have the old sores to forgive.... I am sure you will understand that I say this merely because I want you to understand that my position is probably one of the most independent in Edinburgh,—I want nothing from anybody and I fear nothing from anybody. I mean to do in this, and larger matters, what seems to me right, to the best of my lights, and I have long ago learned while doing so to leave consequences to take care of themselves. With hearty thanks for your kindness, believe me, Yours very truly, S. Jex-Blake. Pray excuse this hasty line, written at the end of a long day’s work.” If this seems written in an ungracious and reprehensible spirit, the reader must bear in mind the fire the writer had come through. And after all what is it but a somewhat pagan rendering of St. Paul’s “From henceforth let no man trouble me....” In any case the Trayners were not of the kind to take offence. Their interest in S. J.-B. and her work remained unbroken. Lady Trayner visited the Dispensary more than once and took on as a regular pensioner a brave old patient with a disfigured face, who appealed to her sympathies more than most. The lecture was free, and proved a great success. “You will like to know,” writes S. J.-B. to Miss Irby, “that my lecture went off very well, the hall (which holds nearly 2000) was crammed to the doors and stairways, and I lectured from slight notes, much better, Ursula says, than if I had read a lecture. I have already had 4 new patients in consequence.” It now remained for women to avail themselves de facto of their admission de jure to the Royal Colleges. “I trust,” wrote S. J.-B. in a letter to the Times, announcing the fresh step gained, “I trust that classes will now within a few months be re-opened in Edinburgh. With a view to definite arrangements for the ensuing winter session, I shall be very glad to receive the names of any ladies desiring to study in Scotland.” A few days later she wrote to the secretary of the Extra-Mural School, who happened to be an old ally. “Bruntsfield Lodge, March 17. [1886]. Dear Dr. Macadam, I have already had nearly a dozen letters from ladies wishing to study Medicine in Scotland, so it is clear that the demand is real and considerable. Can you give me any printed statement about the classes, etc., in the Extra Mural School?... Of course I know that if separate classes were required much greater expense must be involved, but I sincerely hope that most of the lecturers may be willing to admit women in the ordinary way. If so, I believe that a considerable number would join the classes next winter. If you would kindly let me have a list of the Lecturers, and would tell me when the next meeting is to be, I might (if you thought it desirable) see some of them before the meeting. I wish very much that the matter could be favourably decided next month, as this would give us time to make arrangements, and get up a good class, etc. Would it not be well for you before the meeting to get an official letter from the Registrar of the Irish College of Surgeons stating that women are admitted to all the ordinary classes (except Practical Anatomy) at Dublin? To turn to another subject,—can you tell me the chemical nature of the fluid contained in “Fire-Extinguishing Grenades,” etc. Are they really reliable? Yours very truly, S. Jex-Blake.” It is clear from this that she had not the smallest intention nor wish to found a separate School of Medicine for Women; but her hopes as regarded the lecturers were doomed to disappointment. On the whole they showed themselves enlightened and helpful, but they declined to admit women to their ordinary classes. They were quite willing—some of them—to lecture to women separately, but one could not expect first-rate men in rising practice to devote an hour or more of precious time daily without more adequate remuneration than the fees of the first handful of women students were likely to represent. There must, of course, be a sufficient guarantee to make the undertaking worth their while, and the students were assuredly not in a position to provide that guarantee; so S. J.-B. made herself responsible for it at once. For the first year the women attended separate lectures at one of the men’s schools, but it soon became obvious that separate premises, in which students could study and dissect, and change their dress, and generally make themselves at home, were, if not absolutely necessary, at least highly desirable. Now it happened that, in the days of the old struggle, in a moment perhaps when hope ran high, S. J.-B., Miss Louisa Stevenson and Miss Du Pre had bought the famous old premises in Surgeon Square, which had been a medical school for generations. Here Robert Knox had lectured to his students, and the place had thrilling and sinister associations with Burke and Hare. When all hope of education in Edinburgh seemed finally blighted, these premises had been let to various tenants, but S. J.-B. had never lost sight of the possibility that they might some day be used again for their original purpose. So now the old place was repaired and cleaned and painted and heated,—under the personal supervision of S. J.-B. and one or two friends, at small cost as regards money, but with lavish expenditure of brains and good will. It was necessary, too, that hospital instruction should be provided, and to this end, S. J.-B. approached the authorities at Leith. “The very large number of students at the Edinburgh Infirmary,” she wrote to Dr. Struthers, “make it almost impossible that women should there get opportunities of study, and (as there is no other suitable hospital of sufficient size in Edinburgh) I am anxious to ascertain whether the Directors of the Leith Hospital would entertain the idea of admitting them to opportunities of clinical study in their wards. If so, I should be glad to make any arrangement as to fees that may be desired by the Directors; or if they preferred it would at once guarantee fees to the amount of 200 guineas yearly.” Her application was warmly supported by Mr. R. Somerville, and others of the Directors, and after a long series of letters and interviews, the negotiation was completed. “Every night I am quite as tired as is safe,” she wrote to Miss Irby, who had begged for a postcard, “and yet every day I have to omit half a dozen things that cry out to be done. However I do not mean to break down again, so I simply do what I can and leave the rest.” Little by little the School became more of a corporate thing. A resident secretary was necessary, of course, so S. J.-B. hit on a likely person[152] and trained her. Caretakers (man and wife) were found to look after the premises. A library was provided, and, as soon as might be, anatomical and Materia Medica museums. No one who has not lived through the founding of a medical school can form the faintest idea how much it means. S. J.-B. had been over the ground before, and may be supposed to have realized what she was undertaking. She had Dr. Balfour’s help from the first, and a tower of strength he proved: by degrees a committee was formed: but from first to last the responsibility rested to all intents and purposes on her shoulders. The position, too, on which the whole thing rested was curious. The School was not recognized as such. Each lecturer was recognized individually. At any moment any lecturer in the Extra-Mural School was free to open a rival class and cut the ground from under S. J.-B.’s feet. The new venture, moreover, had all the disadvantages inherent in a new creation. It had no senior students, none even, at first, who had gone through the wholesome discipline of the modern High School: it had no tradition. By the sheer necessities of the case, S. J.-B. was compelled to be senior student,—to be tradition. For ten or more years the School did excellent work, but the instability of its foundation proved too great. Whether the “lion-hearted”[153] pioneer, with her extraordinary bent for arranging detail, could in any case have made a success of the venture, under such difficult conditions, when the heroic days of initiation were over, it is impossible to say. The reader will not need to be told—S. J.-B.’s bitterest opponent never denied—that she put into the venture infinitely more labour and sympathy and affection and brains than she need have done,—and there were those among the students who came near to appreciating these qualities as they deserved. But of course there were others—as at Mannheim of old—with whom a cheaper personality would better have served the turn. For a year or two everyone was happy and contented, and then the crash of temperaments came. There is no need to tell the story in detail. Some of those concerned were young, and some were foolish, and there are some concerning whom one’s lips are sealed. The original difficulty was complicated by side issues that never could be fully threshed out. The actual story seems interminable, and sometimes insignificant enough, but the principle underlying it is of the real essence of tragedy. Enough to say that at the end of a year or two, S. J.-B. found herself confronted with a form of opposition which no one in authority would cheerfully have gone to meet,—a form of opposition peculiarly trying to one of her temperament. Supreme tact might have weathered the storm,—and it must always be remembered that, on many occasions in life, in this connection and in others,—she evidenced a tact that was all but supreme. In any case she failed here. Opposition classes were started in due course on a cheaper basis, classes in which the central controlling power was purely nominal. There was endless propaganda; some sort of organization was got together: everybody who had a grudge against S. J.-B. remembered it now; her faults, mistakes and deficiencies—particularly her want of enthusiasm for missions—came back relentlessly upon her head: and she found herself (as Thring has said of “every consistent worker on principle”), “put in the position of opposing what she had always worked for, and her opponents posing as the workers.” Professor Masson and Miss Louisa Stevenson, both of whom had considered the founding of a Scottish School at this moment premature, wrote to her in grim amusement at some of the names which now appeared in support of the cause. Let it be conceded for all the concession is worth, that in a sense S. J.-B. brought the difficulty upon herself. Once again something was required of her which a smaller person could have given, but which she could not give. The tragic element lay in this that she never saw where she was at fault. She was conscious of an honest purpose and of unwearying unselfish endeavour. What more could one ask? So many people succeed who give much less than this! She even yielded on a good many points—when yielding was too late. What strikes one most on looking back is the extraordinary loyalty with which most of the students rallied round her when the split came. When one of the lecturers (who had striven, like so many others, to make “even a slight alteration” in her) congratulated her on the “brains” she had retained in the School, she responded characteristically: “And the heart.” “And the heart,” he agreed. Some of the lecturers were even finer. “The terms you name are quite satisfactory,” wrote Dr. Aitken when things were at quite their worst, and S. J.-B. could no longer guarantee an adequate emolument. “I would take your students without fee of any kind before I would see you beat, so you need not let the matter give you any concern.” And Dr. (now Professor) A. J. Thomson, when he heard she was leaving Edinburgh, wrote: “I have always felt, if I may dare to say so, that your part has been like that of a general who won a great battle and then rode away, leaving the achievement with the ungrateful. Happily you know how many of us are neither ungrateful nor ignorant.” But finest of all was the effect on S. J.-B. herself. She fought on, of course,—that was in the nature of her,—and loyal supporters were many;[154] but, although the long struggle to keep the better School going,—to get it improved, endowed, affiliated to the University of St. Andrews,—absolutely wore her out, she never became embittered and she never really lost her buoyancy. When Queen Margaret College opened a medical side in 1890, one might have thought it was the last straw, especially as it meant the removal of eight of her students whose homes were in or near Glasgow, but in this case her loss meant the progress of the cause, and she rejoiced in it wholeheartedly. It was delightful to see the happy terms on which she and Miss Galloway worked in sympathy until and beyond the final closing of the Edinburgh School. So she always retained her gallant front. If she thought sometimes of “that weary School” she never spoke so: she always saw in it the ideal of what it was going to be. Success was always just round the corner so to speak, all but within reach; but success, in the form in which she looked for it, never came. Success there was, of course, “not its semblance, but itself.” Honest work always means success. The brief life of that School was the seed-time of much fine work that would otherwise never have been done. Its students have acquitted themselves nobly in many parts of the world. And on the principle that “he who watereth shall himself be watered,” it did much for S. J.-B. It gave her a little band of juniors who in some measure understood her, who responded to her ideals, who were proud to assist her and to reckon themselves her disciples. The interest she took in them individually was amazing. No trouble was too great that would forward their interests in any way. As the years went on, she seemed to forget herself altogether in their successes. She lived anew in their lives. Her whole nature grew and mellowed, though it could not change. And one is glad to record that never again to the end of life did she suffer the weeks and months of loneliness that had darkened the early days of her professional career. CHAPTER V
RE-OPENING OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY TO WOMEN It seemed better in the previous chapter to explain at once that, after a brief run of prosperity, the history of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was chequered by a long fight against heavy odds; but no one who visited the stirring bee-hive at Surgeon Square would have guessed at the struggle that underlay its cheerful aspect. And, fortunately, there were many strands in S. J.-B.’s life besides the struggle for her School. In a doctor’s experience there must always be much to interest and cheer, and S. J.-B.’s range was wider than that of the ordinary doctor. Editors were no less glad of her work than of old. In the autumn of 1887, she wrote to the Editor of the Nineteenth Century, offering him a paper on Medical Women which should supplement the one contributed by Mr. Stansfeld ten years before. Mr. Knowles replied immediately that he would be delighted to receive such a paper from her, and “the sooner the better.” The article duly appeared in November of that year. At her little hospital she had a series of residents, some from the London School and some from her own, whom one can fairly describe as picked women,—keen and competent and loyal; and she enjoyed and appreciated these as they deserved. More and more, too, people sought her opinion and advice on every subject of real human interest. One doctor—a complete stranger—even wrote from far wilds to ask whether there was any lady studying in her School who she thought was likely to make him a suitable wife. He was coming home, but his leave was short, and he would be glad if she would save time by paving the way for him as far as possible. I am afraid the students never even heard of this opportunity! How far she was from discouraging a true marriage may be gathered from the following letter to one of her former residents for whom she had designs in the way of more ambitious work, and who wrote in some trepidation to confess that she was engaged to be married: “May 30, 1895. Dear Miss ——, I was very glad to get your letter of March 10th, and very much interested in all your news. I may set your mind at rest by saying at once that I am not going to scold you about your engagement. I hold most strongly that ‘Love should still be Lord of all,’ and that if two good people love each other heartily in the right way, they ought to marry under almost all circumstances. I don’t believe in vows of celibacy for medical women any more than for any one else. Women are women before they are doctors. At the same time I am afraid you are rather sanguine in hoping that you will be of more use in your profession married than single. It is not the husbands that are the obstacles to practice, but the babies. If a woman becomes a mother, I certainly think nothing outside her home can have, or ought to have, so much claim upon her as her children. However I think it constantly happens that we plan out one kind of life for ourselves, and then that another is shaped out for us, and we must believe, if we believe in a God at all, that the wisdom that decides for us is greater than our own. So long as we act up to our highest light, I think we need not trouble ourselves about results.... With all good wishes, believe me, Yours sincerely, S. Jex-Blake.” That this was no new attitude on her part we learn from a letter written many years before to Miss Bertha Cordery. “You are quite right in thinking that I do not by any means as a matter of course congratulate people on their marriage, but when you say that ‘having met, no other result was possible,’ I think you express the essence of a good marriage with the terseness worthy of the distinguished historian.[155]” This seems the best place to say one word about the special interest S. J.-B. took in her Hindu students. The first of these, Annie Jagannadham, was a young woman of such fine and finished character that her early death, soon after her return to her native land, was a matter for infinite regret, but scarcely for surprise. When she qualified as a doctor, S. J.-B. wrote to the Spectator to point out the desirability of sending back Hindu women educated in England to minister to their own countrywomen; and her letter called forth a gratifying response from Mr. James Cropper of Ellergreen (who had been interested in S. J.-B.’s first application to the University of Edinburgh many years before) offering to found a scholarship for Hindu women at her school. This was accordingly done, and a series of Hindu students was the result. Differing from each other in many respects, they were alike in one thing, and that was a real gift for understanding and appreciating their Dean. They seemed to find the Mother side of her by a sort of instinct. “I cannot tell you,” wrote one who had failed in an examination abroad, “how much your kind letter comforted me. When I was happy I wrote to other people; but when I was in distress I wrote to you and was soothed, for failure did not seem so hard when you were satisfied with my work.” When Rukhmabai came to Edinburgh for her Final Professional Examination, she was S. J.-B.’s guest, and a strong mutual admiration and friendship was the result.
In accepting the chairmanship of the School, Dr. Balfour had made it almost a stipulation that S. J.-B. should personally undertake the teaching of Midwifery, and, in consequence of this, she was the first woman to be recognized as a lecturer in the Extra-Mural School. As a matter of fact, her special technical training was necessarily out of date. Dr. Balfour probably looked upon Midwifery mainly as a subject that successful physicians leave behind them, and did not realize that greater strides had been made in the teaching of this subject than in any other. However, S. J.-B. was a born teacher, as we know: she worked hard: and she had the able coÖperation of the late Dr. Milne Murray, whose attitude towards her in this connection was one more of the splendid loyalties bound up in the story of her life. And one cannot talk of loyalty without recalling a characteristic letter from Dr. Pechey, written when she received the news of S. J.-B.’s appointment: “Hip Hip Hooray!! Hip Hip Hooray!!! Hip Hip Hooray!!!!! In the very place where we were stoned and beaten 18 years ago. Well, I am glad to have lived to see the day. Just when your paper came, I was feeling life a burden. Do you think they would let me lecture on something—Shakespeare or the musical glasses—when I come home if ever I do. When you want an assistant let me know. I don’t know when I have felt so pleased and elated and especially that it should happen to you, it is so appropriate. Isn’t Mrs. Thorne very pleased and everybody else?... Dear Sophy, I am so pleased, more than if some one had left me a million of money, though I do have to look hard at every anna now before letting it go!” “Thanks for your very hearty congratulations,” S. J.-B. wrote in reply,—“... Selfishly, I regret it very much, for I have no idea how to find either the time or the strength (or knowledge) for the course, but I suppose I must just do the best I can. Of course if you were here you could have the pick of the lecturerships in the School, and after one precedent, they couldn’t refuse to recognize you: but the pay would hardly keep your Highness in hairpins.” The idea of having her old friend in Edinburgh dwelt in her mind nevertheless, and some time later—in May 1890—she wrote: “By the bye if you do decide to leave India next year, and if it could possibly be made to fit in with Mr. Phipson’s plans,[156] I wish with all my heart that you could see your way to come and settle in Edinburgh, and take up with your splendid energy the very wide field in Scotland that is almost ripe to harvest. My strength is about spent, and besides you have elements of social success that I never should have. You are far more of a woman of the world and a far more able diplomatist. My Hospital will never develop in my tired hands, but I believe you might make a splendid thing of it; and at the same time I believe you would have a capital west-end practice almost immediately, and of course a lectureship if you cared to have it. Think this idea over thoroughly before you decide against it. Yours sincerely, S. Jex-Blake.” The feeling that her time of work was drawing to an end was intensified by the news of the death of her friend, Dr. Lucy Sewall. This was the last heavy bereavement she had to face, and she took it hard. To her friend, Mrs. Brander, her “eldest daughter,” she had written a month or two before the above correspondence with Dr. Pechey: Dearest Bel, For the second time I have to send you terribly bad news. My dear friend, Dr. Sewall, has been as you know in bad health for the last 4 or 5 years, and last month she was seized with a very severe attack of bronchitis, from which she never regained strength, and she passed away ‘very peacefully’ on Feb. 13th. Though I have seen so little of her for some years back, it is a great blow to me,—the greatest I have felt since 1881. How I hope that she is again with the mother and father she loved so very dearly. Indeed she has never really rallied, I believe, from her father’s death (at 90) a year ago. A whiter sweeter soul never lived, and her memory ‘smells sweet and blossoms in the dust.’ I cannot write more today, but I could not let you hear it from anyone else. I hope you got the little book I sent you at Christmas. I could not write but it carried much affection to you. Yours affectionately, S. J.-B.” For the Englishwoman’s Review she wrote an account of this “strong and gentle soul,” quoting the lines Whittier had written about her ancestor. “I enclose the whole verse about Judge Sewall,” she says to the Editor, “in case you have room for it. It might almost word for word have been written of his far-away descendant. ‘Walks the Judge of the Great Assize, Samuel Sewall, the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honour and woman trust.’” S. J.-B.’s hands might be tired, but the eye on the bridge was as keen as ever. She had been aiming from the first at some sort of reinforcement from St. Andrews, and in 1888 Lord Lothian’s Bill had seemed to open a new door of hope. “May 10th. [1888.] Dear Mr. Stansfeld, The Bill of which I wrote is the ‘Universities (Scotland) Bill,’ which has been introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Lothian. I believe it has not yet come down to your House, but I am very anxious, when it does so, that attention should be directed to the clauses about women and about ‘affiliation of Colleges,’ which latter might solve our problem, e.g. if our Edinburgh School were affiliated to St. Andrews. I shall be most grateful if you will talk about it beforehand with members likely to be interested, and if possible speak on it also. Yours always gratefully, S. Jex-Blake.” The previous day she had written, “May 9th. Dear Lord Aberdare, I am extremely obliged for your very kind letter, and shall be most grateful if you can make Lord Lothian’s acquaintance, interest him in our subject, and introduce me to him. I am very anxious to secure his favourable attention, and that of the Commission, and I am sure that your introduction would give me the best possible chance. I am most anxious not to lose the present opportunity to bring our needs to the front. With renewed thanks, Yours very truly, S. Jex-Blake.” When the Bill was passed and Commissioners appointed, she laid before them a memorial in support of the desired aims, and in June 1891 she was summoned to give evidence in person. On June 28th she wrote to Miss Du Pre: “I had to appear before the University Commissioners last Wednesday, and if possible I will send you a proof of my examination. It was very satisfactory, as the Chairman (Lord Kinnear) said they were satisfied that it was desirable and necessary to give medical degrees to women in Scotland.” To another friend she had written a week earlier, “By the bye you will like to see the enclosed proof of my evidence last week before the Universities Commission. Miss E.-L. made me tell my class about it next day, and they clapped warmly; and then, after the lecture, as I was going out, they gave me another round. I stopped and said,—‘Oh, is that for Univ. Commission?’ ‘For you, Doctor!’ shouted Miss Moorhead.” The whole matter, as is usual with such things, ran a leisurely course, for on April 27th, 1892, she writes again, “... I had one very amusing experience on Monday. The Scottish Universities Commission has been issuing some ‘Ordinances’ to which serious objections are taken, and among others a flaw has been found in the Women’s Ordinance, which we want to have remedied. All the objecting bodies were to meet together, so Dr. Balfour and I were summoned by enclosed solemn document to appear to represent our School, and it was amusing to find myself an invited delegate, at whose entrance the Chairman rose and came forward with outstretched hand, in the awful University Court Room, where our case had over and over again been tried by a hostile authority, and lost, without an opportunity for a word in our own defence. Sir Robert Christison looked down from the wall, and it made me almost chuckle to think what he would have said! Sic transit! How the world moves! I have just heard this morning of a legacy of £100 for our Hospital, and probably something for the School though (from vague wording) that is less certain.” At this time the great hope—as so often in the past—lay in the direction of the University of St. Andrews, but the hope proved illusory once more. In reading the history, one feels again and again as if St. Andrews University had been surrounded by some strange magic circle, for it happened on numberless occasions that when everything seemed settled, and every difficulty had been laboriously overcome, some unsuspected link in the chain gave way, and endless exertion was rendered null and void. So it seems to have happened now, for in June 1894 we find S. J.-B. writing again to Miss Du Pre:
“I have been desperately busy this week, chiefly at the University or with University people, as circumstances have led to my very suddenly applying to have our School recognized by the [Edinburgh] University Court, which really seems possible, Calderwood and Watson both being members of it. The story is a long one, arising out of complications at St. Andrews. I enclose a copy of my Memorial,—please return it. It comes up tomorrow before the Court. Watson said so very kindly that he hoped it would pass, if only that I might have rest from my long labours,—wasn’t it sweet of him? A quarter of a century is a long time!” So the old warrior gathered herself together once more and made a last appeal to the University Court of her own Alma Mater to grant to other women the privilege that could never now be her own. She reminded them that in 1869 the same Court had conceded the principle of admitting women to graduation in medicine, that that principle had never been disallowed by them, and that the problem of its practical accomplishment had been under the consideration of the Court ever since. It cannot be said that hope ran high even now. It had always been a saying among Scottish students that Edinburgh would be the last stronghold to yield; but the tide everywhere was on the turn. After full consideration of the subject, the Court rose nobly to the spirit of the resolution passed by their predecessors in 1869, and in October 1894 made public their determination to admit women forthwith to graduation in medicine.medicine.
The National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women, which had done such excellent service after its foundation in 1871, had for some years ceased to exist; “At the present time many of its members had passed away, and others were widely scattered, but it seemed desirable to those women who had always been members of it, and who were still resident in Edinburgh, that some congratulation should be offered by them to Dr. Jex-Blake, for the great victory that had been achieved by her in the opening of the degrees of the University of Edinburgh to women after a struggle extending over exactly five-and-twenty years.”[157] So on Saturday, November 3rd, 1894, these honourable women met together and presented the following address: “We, the undersigned, women members of the original National Association for the Medical Education of Women, resident at this time in Edinburgh, desire to offer to you our warm and hearty congratulations on the brilliant success you have achieved in securing the opening of the Edinburgh University medical examinations and degrees to women students. We know that it was largely due to your great ability and knowledge that the enabling Bill of 1876 was passed, which put it into the power, if they so willed, of each of the nineteen examining bodies of the United Kingdom to admit women to qualifying examinations, and which was the foundation of the success on which we congratulate you to-day. Many who worked with and under you in the old days have passed away. We who are left take this opportunity of expressing to you our appreciation of the great sacrifice you have made of time, and strength, and money, to win for younger women in their own country a complete medical education crowned by a degree. To have done this in Edinburgh we regard as a success of which you may be justly proud. (Signed)—Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Anne H. Calderwood, Grant A. Millar, Flora C. Stevenson, Phoebe Blyth, Sarah E. Siddons Mair, Emily Hodgson, Charlotte Geddes, Agnes Craig, Anne B. Foster, Hannah Lorimer, M. G. Paton, Priscilla Bright M‘Laren, Elizabeth Stuart Blackie, Elisa Carlile Stevenson, Mina Kunz, C. M. Charteris, Margaret Wyld, Eliza Wigham, Jessie M. Wellstood, Euphemia Millar, Eliza Scott Kirkland, Maggie A. Rose, Augusta G. Wyld, Helen Brown, A. A. Skelton, C. M. Edington, A. Edington, Amelia R. Hill, Mary Burton, Louisa Stevenson.—9th October, 1894.” Before leaving the subject of S. J.-B.’s active life in Edinburgh, it may be well to sum up some of her main characteristics as a doctor and as a citizen, though to a great extent these have already become evident. First, was her great deftness in any kind of manipulation. It was interesting to see her outshine in this respect so many of the trig and dainty women who at one time or another, worked under her. Second, was her readiness in emergency. The grass never grew under her feet. It is on record that she had finished some minor operation before her anaesthetist knew that she had begun. An amusing instance of her readiness occurs in a chance episode with her carriage-builder. It was not unusual for her to have little rubs with this man. He and his subordinates had difficulty in living up to her ideas of punctuality, and no doubt they considered her a bit of a nuisance. One day she called to remonstrate about something and found “the Governor” in great distress from a splinter of steel which had become imbedded in his eye. “I’ll take it out for you,” she said, and, turning to the men, added, “Bring a chair.” The chair was placed by her direction in the best light obtainable, i.e. on the gallery surrounding the carriage yard, in full view of the men and horses below. She made the patient sit down, and, standing behind him, produced a surgical needle from her instrument case and with its curved convex edge deftly removed the splinter. It was all done in the twinkling of an eye. Very simple, but very characteristic. And it would have been awkward if she had failed. Third, was her refusal to let a patient die. No doctor wishes to lose a case, but with S. J.-B. it was a matter of definite personal struggle. One day in the comparatively early days of practice, she came in very late to lunch, having been urgently detained with a private patient. She was anxious about a case in her little hospital—a surgical case which had developed medical complications—and she sent a messenger down for news. “Just sinking,” was the pencilled reply from the resident. “Dr.“Dr. —— and Dr. —— [the consultants] have been here, and have given her up. We have ceased to worry her with food.” “Ceased to worry her with food!” One saw the summer lightnings on S. J.-B.’s forehead. “Tell Charles to bring the brougham round immediately.” Within half an hour the beef-tea was being administered by her own hand; and there was no more talk of “not worrying the patient with food.” She was worried until she not only rallied, but got her foot on to the ladder of a slow and sure recovery, a recovery that meant just everything to the husband and children who were anxiously awaiting the mother’s return to the little home. As a neighbour and citizen S. J.-B. had certain outstanding qualitÉs, which, with their corresponding dÉfauts, have never tended to make the possessor of them universally popular. She considered it a public duty to uphold as far as lay in one person’s power the general standard of proper behaviour and efficiency in the community. She had no use for sluggards and shirkers. “Here’s the Doctor,—mind yersel’!” a cabman was heard to say when he and a gossiping mate had allowed their vehicles to sprawl right across the highroad just as the familiar pony-chaise came in sight. No postal service ever deteriorated in her vicinity. If lesser officials failed to listen, she appealed to the Postmaster-General, and she accomplished many minor reforms by which her neighbours profited as much as she did herself. Assuredly she was no grumbler, but she considered that those who make it their aim to slip smoothly through life, leaving to others all the irksome work of protesting, are—to say the least—acting an unheroic part. She agreed that all things come to him who waits,—and come through the exertions of those who have not been content merely to wait. The callow upstart official was apt to fare badly at her hands, but if the official happened to be an elderly woman at—say—some isolated country post office, one saw S. J.-B. at her best. She would steer the way gently and patiently through some simple transaction that seemed involved enough in those wilds; and, if she was met by a flash of interest and intelligence, her appreciation was great. “Why we’ll make you Postmaster-General!” she has been heard to say, leaving a beaming face behind her as she gathered up the reins and drove away,—a visitant indeed from another world. CHAPTER VI
DRIVING TOURS. ANIMAL FRIENDS All through the years of work and conflict, S. J.-B. had looked forward to her “Sabbatical year,” when, with a clear conscience, she could retire from active life, and share with others the rest and seclusion she longed for. As early as 1892 she had written to a cousin in New Zealand about a visit from her brother, who had been examining at Fettes: “Today he is gone south again. His life at Wells must be very quiet and restful after the hard work of Rugby. I am beginning to think that I must soon wind up my work and rest. I have worked about as hard as anybody could for more than thirty years, and I think I have almost done my share. There are young people coming up now to do the medical work,—we have about 130 women on the British Register,—in 1865 when I began to work there was only one!” Some months later she seems to have written in the same vein to the old aunt in Norfolk, for Mrs. Gunton replies in a holograph letter of four beautifully-written pages: “You must not talk of being tired with your occupation at present. Consider what a chicken you are! On the 11th of November I was 93.” How difficult to find any ground of comparison between those two lives, grown on the same stock, the one of 52 and the other of 93!
The opening of the University degrees to women cleared the ground a good deal, but there were still three great difficulties in the way of retirement. The first was the Hospital. S. J.-B. was aware, as she had written to Dr. Pechey that it “never would develop in her tired hands,” but before passing it over to her juniors, she was anxious to use her name and influence for all they were worth in the way of raising money to constitute a small endowment, and justify building, or at least a removal to larger premises.premises. “The one thing that I do long for still,” she wrote, “is to see a thoroughly good Women’s Hospital officered by women established in Edinburgh.” On the whole it was hard work. She wrote many letters in vain, but, little by little, she gathered a few thousands: and there were, as usual, some pleasant surprises by the way. Her old friend, Mrs. Arthur, when asked for £100, promptly responded with a cheque for £500, and some of those who gave little gave with a few words of gratitude and appreciation that lifted the gift quite out of the region of shillings and pounds. A greater obstacle, perhaps, than the Hospital was the sheer difficulty of winding up and getting away. S. J.-B. had begun life as an early Victorian girl with an exceptionally strong hereditary tendency to store and treasure all sorts of things great and small. Almost in the twinkling of an eye she became a modern woman with a correspondence that ran to dozens—sometimes hundreds—of letters in a day,—a modern woman with no leisure at all for the always distasteful work of weeding out and destroying. She was always giving, but she never seemed to give away the things of which she would be well rid. Moreover she always did things on a massive, great-spirited scale. If a number of copies of any document were wanted, it was better to get it printed,—and, if you were getting it printed, it was safer and cheaper to get 500 or 1000 copies while the type was up. You never knew how important that particular document might become. If any article was nearly worn out, buy a new one by all means,—but keep the old one too in case the new one should break down. And so it came about that in her roomy old house, with its spacious attics and cellars, things were stored and stacked and forgotten until their volume was almost incredible to those who had not seen it. And finally there was the great question where to settle. She never lost her love for Edinburgh, and she was often tempted to choose a house on the outskirts. On the other hand, she had always dreamed of growing figs and peaches on a sunny south wall in her beloved native county of Sussex: and how was she to find just the right house in Sussex? So the time slipped away, and she had one illness after another, and it often seemed to those nearest her as if the Sabbatical year would be spent on the other Side of the River. She took holidays more and more frequently, however, and rejoiced increasingly in the work of those who took her place. “My daughters,” “my girls,” “my young doctors,”—how proudly she used to say it! Her face the day five of them were “capped” at the University was a thing to be seen. And if she was an absolutely un-self-sparing worker, she knew better than most how to make holiday; indeed her holidays were as characteristic as everything else she did and was. She hated publicity, hated the noise and bustle of trains, so a driving-tour was her ideal of happiness and refreshment. Her chaise had been specially built for the purpose, with space in front of the dash-board to accommodate two small valises, abundant room under the seats, and other incidental conveniences that one only discovered by degrees. Little by little she had made a fine art of her preparations. The list of compact necessaries was always at hand, and the so-called “work-box” alone contained in a condensed form resources for emergencies of all descriptions. The groom had his own kit behind, and woe betide him if his tools were not at hand when a shoe came loose or a nut needed screwing up. The strain of packing was apt to be considerable for everyone concerned, and it lasted for the first mile or two of the journey. Then gradually it melted away. She would draw a deep breath and give herself up to the delightful sense of freedom. “Oh, isn’t it good to be away!” “It seemed yesterday as if we never should get off.” She always elected to go for the first night or two, if possible, to an inn she knew. She asked so little, but it had to be just the particular little that she wanted. No “much” could take the place of that. “Thank you, that is very nice,” she would say breezily, after surveying the rooms in some unknown inn where she hoped to stay for more than a night. “Now will you open the windows, and give us both some more towels and one or two little tables, and take away the ornaments in the sitting-room. We want room for our books.” Sometimes the people were aghast, but much, much more often they entered into the spirit of the thing and gave her just what she wanted. She had a great knack of carrying them with her. She was so easy-going in most ways, “because of course,” as she used to explain, “one is not responsible for inn servants as one is for one’s own.” And some few inns became to her a real haven of refuge,—Rumbling Bridge, under old Mrs. Macara; Fortingal, in the old days, under Mr. and Mrs. Menzies; and—above all latterly—(under Mrs. Beattie), her beloved Gordon Arms at Yarrow where she and Miss Du Pre had perforce taken refuge one day in a storm, little thinking what a sanctuary it was often to prove. “Yarrow, with all its snows and storms, has answered splendidly for both of us,” she writes to Miss Du Pre in April 1896, “and we shall return on Saturday much refreshed and strengthened. I have been walking a good deal as well as driving. There seems something specially restful about this country,—and this inn is as good as old Fortingal, in rather a different way.” The showy inn where one got no real comforts and where the cooking was bad, was of course the object of her special detestation. Many times she drove all over Perthshire; she went as far north as Loch Maree, and, on one occasion at least, she drove all the way from Brighton to Edinburgh arriving, by the way, to find a patient on the door-step, and that patient a dowager countess! As a rule the horse and chaise were put on the train from Carlisle to Rugby. And the woods and hills seemed the very home of her spirit. More than anything else they brought the poetry to her lips,—Whittier’s My Psalm very frequently in later years,—she did so love those “robes of praise”—and his Autograph too,— “Hater of din and riot, He lived in days unquiet—” But always most frequently of all, perhaps, Mrs. Browning’s couplet,— “The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number, And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.” Of course there were hardships to be faced too,—as one reckoned hardships in those days! Often the rain came down in sheets when one was half way across a shelterless mountain pass; or one drove unexpectedly into deeper and deeper snow till it even happened that the groom had to borrow a spade from a neighbouring cottage, and dig a way out of the drift. Not infrequently night came on before a suitable inn had been found,—for it is by no means every country inn that has stabling,—let alone a lock-up coach-house,—and one drove mile after mile with a tired horse and diminishing hopes. In all such minor emergencies the indomitable spirit rose to meet the occasion. One well nigh forgot the ageing woman and saw only the gallant-hearted boy. She loved driving across a ford, though in some of the Highland rivers it is highly desirable, if not necessary, to know the lie of the ground beneath, and to choose just the right dÉtour or zig-zag. In the neighbourhood of Woking one day when the floods were out, she stopped to ask the way, and was informed that the route she proposed to take was under water and dangerous. It would have been awkward to change plans at that stage, so S. J.-B. drove on, though the water gradually rose above the axles. Presently a meek voice was heard from the groom behind. “He said it was dangerous.” But S. J.-B. did not hear. She was never foolhardy, but she did love the off-chance of an adventure, and there would have been danger often if her nerve had given way, or if she had not had a thorough understanding with her horse. In the moment of emergency one saw what excellent comrades they were. She knew how to get the last ounce of pluck and endurance out of him in case of need. It was all made up to him when the strain was over! That hot mash on reaching the inn was the first thing thought of, and on a trying day there was always a snack of some sort for the groom before the inn was reached, so that the thought of his own supper might not bulk too largely in his general view of life and duty. She was the friend of all her horses, and was never happy with one that failed to respond. Blinkers and bearing-reins were an abomination to her. She even objected to brass, and refused to use the smart be-crested harness that came to her from her father’s stable. Her first favourite was White Angel, a pony. Professor Wilson had helped her to choose him for a driving-tour in her student days. She hired him several times and finally bought him. When she was at Berne for her degree, he lived in her Mother’s stable at Brighton. “Angel and Turk send their duty,” Mrs. Jex-Blake used to write. “Master Turk says, ‘Very dull Christmas without Missis. He don’t think much of Switzerland.’” White Angel was badly named,—he was a lovable creature, but far more of a sprite than an angel. There was never any harm in his mischief, and she used to recount his pranks with the greatest delight. Above all things he hated to be beaten. Going up Corstorphine Hill, he would not allow even a pair of horses to pass him. He would allow them to come close up, and then he would throw up his heels and race to the top as if the chaise had been a nut-shell. And she enjoyed his spirit far too much to check him. He continued this practice up to a period of life when most creatures place comfort above such expensive luxuries; but there came a time when he had to give in. Then, as he heard younger hoofs gaining on him, he would turn his head with great dignity and look the other way, refusing to see that he was being outdone. Very early in the days of practice, Blackbird came to reinforce him, replacing a smarter, more troublesome horse whom S. J.-B. passed on to Dr. Pechey: and on the whole Blackbird was her dearest horse friend. He was such a gentleman, so willing to coÖperate with her, and if necessary to exert himself only too much on those occasional long days in the Highlands. She never could see that he was growing old and ceasing to be a credit to her,—indeed she seldom could see that of anything she had cared for. No flower that had brightened her writing-table was allowed to spend its last hour on an ash-heap. So Blackbird remained king of the stable, doing an occasional easy job, till the remonstrances of S. J.-B.’s friends prevailed against even that, and he was lent to a farmer friend to fill an easy place in the country. Everyone meant well and kindly, but the farmer lent him after a time to a less soft-hearted dairyman, and one day when S. J.-B. went out to visit her old friend, she found him rheumatic and broken-kneed and lean. She said scarcely a word, but asked to be left with him in the stable. She had taken out a feed of beans, Blackbird’s special weakness, and she gave him the feeding-bag herself,—then put her arms round his neck and sobbed. A day or two later Blackbird went to whatever place is reserved for such good and faithful friends. There was Austral, too, the favourite of her later years,—a gentleman in every sense of the word,—his father and mother both in the Australian stud-book. The father was Oxford, the mother Uproarious, and the colt had been cleverly named Undergraduate. It was S. J.-B. who changed his name: she probably thought it inappropriate to a horse of eight or nine years; and indeed it was a word that for her was too full of associations. No other animal came anywhere near horses in her estimation. Cats she disliked. In the old student days she had gone to see Miss Pechey at the home of the lady whose children were fortunate enough to have her for their governess. In the course of dinner, a spoiled and cherished family cat leapt gently on to the table, coming between S. J.-B. and the person to whom she was talking. Without stopping to think, S. J.-B. put out her arm and brushed the cat on to the floor. When, some thirty years later, she was recalling how she had wondered whether so pretty a girl as Miss Pechey could have nerve enough to study medicine, and how she had been informed by one who knew that the pretty girl was “calm as an ox,” Mrs. Pechey Phipson grimly intervened,—“I assure you I was anything but calm when you swept that cat on to the floor!” S. J.-B. laughed. And her laugh was a thing to hear,—especially when the old jokes and the old stories were recalled,—a hearty musical laugh that brought such wholesome tears to her eyes, and that would not allow her face to set into really tragic lines. But there is something more to be said about her dislike to cats. After lunch at Bruntsfield Lodge, it was her custom to gather up the bits of bread that were left and take them out to the lawn to feed the birds. She loved to see the creatures flying towards her the moment she appeared, and no cat was ever tolerated in the grounds. One evening in early summer, when she came in from her work to a high-walled garden all shimmering with promise, a half-grown kitten stood in the way. “Shoo!” said S. J.-B. “Go away! Who allowed that cat to be here?” Everyone trembled,—except the little intruder. It looked S. J.-B. full in the face, and held its ground. Of course it was turned out, but a few days later she saw it in the same place, leaping at a moth in the sunshine. And that time nothing was said. And a few days later still, when she had passed beyond the garden into the house, the kitten walked forward to meet her. This really was too much; but when she protested, the kitten simply looked in her face and smiled. So it was allowed to remain under due restrictions, until one night S. J.-B. was awakened by a loud sneeze. She struck a light, and there, on the shoulder of the sofa at the foot of her bed, calmly reposing on a big woollen shawl, with its eyes fixed on her in gentle protest against the open window, was the kitten. It was simply uncanny. Of course it was only a kitten, but to S. J.-B. it was always more. “It must have known me in a previous incarnation,” she said. So she called it Karma, and before many days were over it was a favoured and lovable member of the household, taking all sorts of liberties in the most attractive way, and even lying unforbidden on her lap. “Li’l cat!” she used to say affectionately. There is one more animal friend worth recalling, though pedigree and admirers he had none,—the Nameless Dog at Bordighera. S. J.-B. had gone to Bordighera in the winter of 1897-98 with a friend who had been ill, and greatly did she enjoy the almost unfailing sunshine. She seldom made acquaintances under such conditions, but two delightful Irish ladies proved irresistible, and a pleasant partie carrÉe was the result. Every day S. J.-B. used to walk with one or other of her friends through the unlovely main street and sit for hours on the rocks at the Cap, watching the waves tumbling about on that fine bit of coast. One day, in passing through the somewhat squalid town, she was stopped by a brawl among a few dogs,—a poor half-starved pariah was being set upon and robbed of some morsel it had contrived to pick up. Never was a more unwholesome-looking object than that dog,—with a coat utterly out of condition,—wounds in every stage of refusal to heal,—and an eye so mauled and battered that only a sanguine prognosis could have associated it with the idea of any special function in the future. The poor wretch showed no fight, but slunk away as soon as its tormentors would let it go,—a pitiful craven, utterly beaten in the struggle for life. Next day it was seen again, slinking about in some bye-way, afraid of everyone who came near. Of course S. J.-B. had a crust in her pocket, and of course the dog got that crust, in spite of rivals and in spite of its own groundless fears. Next day it was looking out, and from that day the crust never failed. Little by little the natural vitality of the creature began to gain ground; he became something like a dog, and able to hold his own. His wounds healed, and he soon could forage a bit for himself; but he never forgot to look out for S. J.-B., and he never refused her crust. He began to walk with her to the Cap, and to lie at a respectful distance till she was ready to go home. One day when she was confined to the house, he appeared on the steps of the hotel. The waiter of course gave him a greeting that in former times would have driven him well on the road to San Remo; but now he held his ground. “What on earth does he want?” said the man. “Oh,” said one of the others, “it’s Miss Blake’s dog.” At that moment S. J.-B. came downstairs to dÉjeuner. She fetched him half her roll from the dining-room, and the waiters might grumble as they pleased. From that time the dog formally constituted himself her body-guard, and quite a creditable body-guard he was, with two good keen eyes always on the look-out, and a coat worth wearing. He had positively acquired a “presence.” He waited for her every day at the hotel gate, and he walked proudly in front of her to the Cap. No other dog dared to come near. No beggar ventured to molest. The very purveyors of inlaid jewellery had to keep their distance. At last—just before she left the Riviera—the Nameless Dog secured a large bit of strongly smelling fish. There would have been a free fight for it in the early days, but no other dog disputed his possession of it now. He can’t have been overfed, poor fellow, even then; but he brought his coveted trophy to S. J.-B. in triumph, and laid it at her feet. I am afraid he missed her horribly, and of course she could not explain to him and say Goodbye,—as no doubt she did to Blackbird. But she left behind a creature able to stand on his own legs, and show a brave face to the world: I am not sure that she didn’t leave behind the germ of a soul. And, while this little story is scrupulously true, it tells in a humble parable many episodes in the life of S. J.-B. that were known to very few. CHAPTER VII
THE SABBATICAL YEAR It was that winter at Bordighera that gave her strength and energy for the final uprooting. The autumn of 1898-99 was spent on a driving tour of 1100 miles through the S.E. counties of England in search of a suitable house. She set about the search in her usual business-like way,—pasting into a book all the likely houses from the agents’ lists, rejecting at a sweep all within ten miles of London, all above or below a certain price and acreage, all that fell short of the desired level above the sea, all that were in a town, or that advertised their proximity to a railway station. The tour was then planned to include as many as possible of those that remained. There were a few unusual disqualifications. One house that attracted her belonged to the Rector of the parish, who refused to let to a Roman Catholic or a dissenter, and, although S. J.-B. was neither, she did not wish to be subjected to any test. Another house—more strangely still—was only to be let to someone who would carry on the evangelistic meetings in an out-building. “What if I were to take the house and preach Buddhism?” she said. Finally she decided on the house which she afterwards named Windydene, near the village of Mark Cross, on the Forest Ridge of Sussex, some five or six miles south of Tunbridge Wells. “It is neither a new or an old house,” she wrote to her friend, Miss Keily,—“built probably some 50 years ago,—very comfortable and airy, and with pleasant garden and shrubberies, a good kitchen garden (much neglected of late) and about 8 acres for pasture and hay.” Having put various negotiations and alterations in train, she returned to Edinburgh for the final winding-up. And there was much in those last months that lingered pleasantly in her memory. In June 1898 the British Medical Association had met in Edinburgh, and S. J.-B., like most other doctors, had kept open house. Some thirty medical women were present at the meeting, and, before it broke up, Dr. Jane Walker organized a dinner under the presidency of the old Edinburgh pioneer. Mrs. Garrett Anderson and Mrs. Scharlieb were among the guests. As always, S. J.-B. spoke very happily, and a number of those present got for the first time something like a just impression of her personality. Early in 1899 a Farewell Reception was given in her honour by the Committee of her Hospital, and some happy inspiration made the occasion not only a social success, but a gathering of unique interest. The majority of the large company were in evening dress, but the Dispensary patients were encouraged to look upon the Reception as their affair too, and they came in what dress they had. Moreover, it was no mere “meeting,” it was a real “party,” with refreshments galore in a side room, and no compulsion to listen to more speeches than one was in a mood for. The Marchioness of Bute, President of the Hospital, who was ill, was represented by one of the Vice-Presidents, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson. Lady Victoria Campbell made a point of being present, as did the Countess of Moray, and many patients, colleagues and allies of all sorts. It was Professor Masson who moved the resolution of the evening: “That this company, remembering all that has been done by Dr. Jex-Blake so preËminently for the medical education of women, and for the opening up of the medical profession to women, both here and elsewhere, take this opportunity of congratulating her on the present evidence of the success everywhere of the cause which owes so much to her powerful initiation and persevering advocacy; and regrets that the occasion should also be one of farewell.” Dr. Balfour felt inclined, he said, to quote the words of the old song: “Dost thou remember, comrade old and hoary, The days we fought and conquered side by side On fields of battle, famous now in story?” He indicated apologetically that the words were not wholly appropriate, but S. J.-B. speedily set his mind at rest on that score. She felt old and hoary enough. Dr. Peel Ritchie recalled how he had begun to help the women students simply from love of fair play, with no enthusiasm at all for the cause, but how he had been gradually worked up to a warmer feeling and interest; and Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Sibbald confessed that he had taken no part in the old conflict at all; but acknowledged gladly that his original dislike to the whole thing had gradually given way as he had watched the life of the protagonist, with increasing admiration, appreciation and....” At that fine silence he left it. A bouquet of roses was presented by Dr. Jessie Macgregor, one of the most brilliant of S. J.-B.’s students; and a basket of flowers by Winifred Beilby, daughter of a lady who had been a member of Committee for many years, and a patient from the first. Yes, it was a great send-off, and S. J.-B. was simple-hearted enough to enjoy it all like a child. There were other tokens of recognition too,—among them a presentation from a great number of women doctors, and another from the Dispensary patients.
There is no doubt that Dr. Sibbald voiced the opinion of many in his tribute to S. J.-B. For years she had lived among the Edinburgh people, driving about in her quiet brougham or unpretentious pony-chaise, and retiring to the high-walled garden. In a way they could not but get to know her. They might like or dislike her, but she went on her way, doing her work absolutely without ostentation, welcoming publicity when it seemed likely to forward her aims or the welfare of the community, shunning it absolutely as a matter of private taste. With most of these whose opinion was worth having, opposition and dislike were simply worn down. She was impulsive, she made mistakes and would do so to the end of her life: her naturally hasty temper and imperious disposition had been chastened indeed, but the chastening fire had been far too fierce to produce perfection. She held out at times about trifles,—failed to see that they were trifles—and at times she terrified people more than she knew. Above all she cared nothing for the praise and blame of any but those whom she respected or loved. Of her indeed it might be said that she heard the beat of a different drummer. But there was another side to the picture after all. Many of those who regretted and criticised details were yet forced to bow before the big transparent honesty, the fine unflinching consistency, of her life. “Yes, it was simply greatness. There was nothing else I could say, I had hedged my path more straitly, But [hers] was the kinglier way.”
It remains only to give some picture of S. J.-B.’s life in retirement. Dr. Clouston had shaken his head when he heard what she proposed to do. It was a great risk to give up a life packed with work and interest for one of leisure. “I am not going to be idle,” she had said. “I am going to farm.” “Then you’ll lose a lot of money.” “I can’t lose much on ten acres.” “Ah!” He seemed to indicate that ten acres was not enough; but as a matter of fact S. J.-B. reaped now all the advantage of that love of detail which had so often proved a snare. “Windydene” had been unoccupied and more or less neglected for some time, so there was abundant scope for an enterprising “Squire.” And the situation was as choice as even the county of Sussex can provide. From the terrace one looked right across to the South Downs, and even Fairlight was supposed to be visible on a clear day. The garden had been ideally planned on ground that fell away rather steeply to the south. It had spacious lawns cunningly planted, some of the trees being of real value and beauty. Beyond the lawns were shady paths and all sort of unexpected openings and surprises; and beyond these again were the meadows hedged with blackberries, and carpeted in spring with cowslip and ladies’ smock. From the meadows one passed through to the woods, and so to the whole billowy stretch of the Weald, with its varied foliage, its blue lights and chasing shadows, its lakes of white mist in the still summer mornings. S. J.-B. had seen the place first in November. She actually took possession in May, when the red chestnuts were in bloom and the woods full of bluebells. “‘The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places’,” she said, “‘I have a goodly heritage’;” and the words were constantly on her lips till the end. Kipling’s “Sussex by the Sea” might have been written for her, so gratefully did she take possession of it. “Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground—in a fair ground— Yea, Sussex by the sea!” Her first care was to institute a fruit garden, building a south wall and planting vines, figs, peaches, nectarines and apricots. In the course of a few years her strawberries in particular had acquired quite a reputation. She started a dairy too, and supervised it herself. It was a real joy to her to have cows in the paddock and to produce her own cream and butter. The hay-making and the harvest supper were great events in the year. But long before she had got as far as this—before the house was more than tolerably straight after the great flitting—she was inviting guests to share the joys of the spring and summer. All through the later years of her life she had the intimate daily companionship she prized so generously, but her doors stood open always as of old. “Windydene is a Mecca,” one of the younger medical women said, and there were those to whom it was a Mecca and something more. From S. J.-B.’s old fellow-students down to some unknown girl graduate, they came from all parts of the world. We have seen what Dr. Lillie Saville thought of life at Windydene, and indeed Lady Jenkinson’s “soul and body, especially soul” often finds an echo. A woman doctor who met S. J.-B. first at that British Medical Association dinner in Edinburgh writes years later: “Thinking it over, I see that the best new influence that came into my life during the last seven years was the Doctor’s young fresh interest, her enthusiasm, her breadth of mind, her spiritual force and faith, and her strong original wisdom.” But it was not only women doctors who came. Literary folk were guests too, and, above all, the old friends, whatever they had chanced to become. Miss Du Pre, Lady Jenkinson, Miss Catharine Eliott-Lockhart, Miss E. Cordery, Mrs. Gardiner, Mr. James Cordery, Mr. Phipson and Dr. Pechey Phipson, Mrs. (Dr.) Mears, and many others. The arrival of Dr. Agnes M‘Laren from her season’s practice on the Riviera was one of the events of the early summer; she always came by Newhaven and so to Crowborough, where S. J.-B. faithfully awaited her. A still earlier event in the year was the arrival of Miss Caroline Jex-Blake, “when the primroses were out,” and her joy in the meadows and woods was a thing that only those who knew her could conceive. Little enough entertainment in the ordinary sense was offered to the guests at any time. Breakfast in bed was an unfailing institution for tired workers, and most of the guests were tired workers. There was fruit and cream to heart’s content and beyond it; there were long leisurely drives uphill and down dale through that beautiful country,[158]—plenty of chess for those who were worthy of chess,—unforgettable evenings round the study fire; and at all other times—stated meals apart—an almost unlimited choice of books,—and liberty to do as one pleased.
S. J.-B. used to say that her one extravagance at Windydene was journals and books. She had always been a book buyer, and books were more essential than ever now. New shelves had to be put up every year or so. Her collection of recent novels alone induced a well-known publisher to say that she ought to have a testimonial from authors and publishers. There was a certain amount of practical benevolence in this. In Edinburgh she had often said that an important part of her treatment of patients was the lending of suitable novels, and at Windydene she often had twenty or thirty books out at a time. Her taste was catholic in the extreme, but she specially appreciated among others Peter Ibbetson, San Celestino and Out of Due Time; and—like so many distinguished people—she keenly enjoyed detective stories, especially for reading in the watches of the night. She had lost none of her love of poetry. The “poetry book-case” had an honoured place as of old; but, as she sat in her big chair by the fire, she had a revolving stand filled with special favourites within reach of her right hand, and, on her left (in the angle of the chimney-piece) a tiny set of shelves brought from the corresponding nook in her Edinburgh consulting room, contained her Mother’s Bible and a few other chosen friends. But the range of her purchases during those later years was very wide: almost at random one recalls Blomefield’s Norfolk, all Father Tyrrell’s works, a whole library of books on social problems,—industry, poverty, labour, etc.—and a fine copy of The Book of the Dead. She retained her old interest in what one may call the polemics of religion, and this was intensified by a delightful and unexpected friendship of those later days. She had not been many weeks in Mark Cross before some mutual friend suggested that she might care to know the Roman Catholic priest—a man, as it chanced, of scholarship and culture—following up the suggestion with the loan of a book which the priest had published some years before.[159] A few days later S. J.-B. wrote the following letter: “June 15th [1899]. Dear Sir, I have been reading your book on Reunion with very great sympathy and admiration; and, if you care to call on an elderly woman who is not of your creed, I should be very glad to have the honour of making your acquaintance. I expect to be at home tomorrow afternoon, or could fix any day except Monday, next week, if more convenient to you. Yours truly, Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D. Rev. Father Duggan.” It did not strike the looker-on as a specially likely combination, but it was the unlikely thing that happened. The Revd. Father Duggan became one of the most welcome guests at Windydene. He and his dog, Caesar, used to drop in almost every Sunday afternoon for strawberries on the lawn or tea round the study fire. I don’t pretend that Caesar took any interest in the strawberries—possible rabbits were a more absorbing subject—but he did enjoy his bowl of tea, especially when a lump of sugar remained at the bottom as a bonne bouche. He was the centre of interest when his turn came, and, when the anticipated “crunch” was heard, the general laugh of sympathy never failed. They were just happy children together,—the Dog, the Reverend Father and the old Pioneer, and now the world is the poorer for the loss of all three. There were great talks on those Sunday afternoons; it was no uncommon thing to see three versions of the Bible and half a dozen volumes of the Encyclopaedia lying about at the end to witness to the interest of the discussion. There was much borrowing and lending of books,—and no obvious change of view on the part of anyone except in the direction of increased tolerance and brotherly kindness. A very simple anecdote will give as good an idea as any of the nature of the friendship. Father Duggan had been the lender of Canon Cheyne’s Commentary on the Psalms, which he had just reviewed for a daily paper. “I won’t pretend that I read the whole of it,” said S. J.-B. in returning the volumes. “In fact”—with a sparkle of mischief,—“I noticed when it came that only about a quarter of the leaves were cut.” “Yes,” he admitted tranquilly. “I did think of cutting a few more before sending it up to you,—but I didn’t.” “Ah, no!” she said. “You were an honest man.” She was on excellent terms, too, with the local doctors: they looked forward to a chat when they met her in the country lanes, and, if, when she left Edinburgh, there had been any hatchet left to bury, their boyish camaraderie would soon have compelled her to bury it. “I confess I had a prejudice against women doctors,” one of them said after her death, “but she disarmed me completely.” The life at Windydene was not unbroken. The clay soil in that wooded garden was not conducive to the health of a rheumatic person like S. J.-B., so several brief winters were spent at various places on the Riviera, and one in Portugal, mainly in the Sacred Forest at Bussaco. At Carqueiranne in Provence one of the editors of the Matin was a fellow guest, and he proved another unexpected comrade. It must have been a matter of some surprise to him to meet in that unlikely place, an elderly English gentlewoman with a grasp of the range of European politics and a facility for discussing it in excellent French. It was at Carqueiranne that she and the intimate friend of those days met Mr. Frederic Myers and Professor William James, and here too there was a pleasant partie carrÉe for some days with Professor and Mrs. Gardiner who were on a cycling tour in the south of France. Professor Gardiner had several times been S. J.-B.’s guest in Edinburgh, when his researches brought him north to inspect some unique document among the archives there, and it was a pleasant change to meet when both were in purely holiday mood. In the late Autumn of 1909—in spite of increasing physical disqualifications—she made a last driving tour to her beloved Yarrow.
It is needless to say that she never lost her interest in the happenings of the world. She had latterly a profound distrust of Germany, and was an eager reader of the articles on this subject in the National Review. The Riddle of the Sands was a novel that she helped to circulate widely. Her name appeared pretty frequently in the correspondence columns of the Times, sometimes in connection with Woman Suffrage, more often in unavailing protest against the endless “joy-riding”—degenerating into the sheer lawlessness of the “road-hog”—that was making the loveliest English lanes a nightmare of dust and danger. It was to the Times, too, that she sent her last tribute to the most heroic of her Edinburgh friends in the old days of the “fight.” “Sir,—It seems impossible to let the grave close over the mortal remains of Professor Masson without one word of heartfelt gratitude from those whom he befriended so nobly in 1869 and the following years. Our struggle with the University was hard enough as it was, but without his help and that of half a dozen other men it would have been impracticable. I feel that it is really quite impossible to do justice to the chivalry, the unselfishness, the constant readiness to espouse the unpopular cause, and to fight in its foremost ranks, which characterized Professor Masson, and it would take far too much of your space to say even a fraction of what could be said of the aid he gave us in that great battle. But I beg you at least to allow me to say that those so deeply indebted to him will never forget him, but hold his memory in love and reverence as long as they live. Yours obediently, Sophia Jex-Blake. Windydene, Mark Cross, Sussex, Oct. 10 [1907].” The suffrage movement was always near her heart, though she never grew restless or impatient over the long delay. She never approved of tax-resistance, and militant methods made her uneasy, though she admitted that they had given the cause a prominence that nothing else could have done. Looking back in 1879 on her own fight she had been able to say, “We seemed led all the way; certainly our aim was straight at the end [before us], but ‘highly and holily’ too. I never minded dirt of others’ throwing, but I don’t think I ever smirched my own conscience.” It was in her favour that the Editor of the Spectator broke through his stern rule of excluding all letters advocating the extension of the franchise to women. “Our respect for so eminent a lady makes it a pleasure to publish Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake’s letter.” It was this question of the suffrage, too, as we shall see, that brought her for the last time into touch with Octavia Hill. S. J.-B.’s outer circle had never suspected her of being “religious,” and even by the fireside she spoke less perhaps, rather than more, on the subject as time went on; but the old quotations kept flashing up to witness to the fire beneath. She was always profoundly interested in any genuine profession of faith, any real conversion or perversion. Several of her friends joined the Church of Rome in those later years, and she was one to whom they always felt the need of justifying themselves. They felt sure of an underlying sympathy, however she might disapprove. Often, of course, she declined to take the matter too seriously. To an old student she wrote: “I am not at all shocked at your Sunday programme, but I must say I am amused at your going to a dissenting chapel.” And again: “I don’t trouble myself much about who goes ‘over to Rome’ and who does not. After all for each one,—‘To his own Master he stands or falls,’ and what we must ask of each is to act to the best of his lights. But I think ‘subterfuging’ implies dim lights.” Her own attitude grew steadily simpler, enriching the vital elements of her Mother’s creed with the wisdom and experience of her own life. As time went on she disliked increasingly to be classed with those whose attitude towards religion is one of indifference. Even before she left Edinburgh she had written to an old school friend, in acknowledgement of a book by another schoolfellow: “To speak plainly then it strikes me as crude and superficial,—as the work of a person who has caught up passwords rather than of one who has struggled through the conflict of thought personally. It reminds me forcibly of the old proverb, ‘Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat.’ The deeper we go into problems, whether social or religious, the less possible it seems to me to pronounce about them offhand. In theology you would, I suppose, rank me among the Agnostics, as I feel very strongly how little we know on such subjects, and that the truly scientific aspect of mind is one of suspension of judgment; but I have no sympathy at all with C.’s attacks on Christianity and the alleged motives of its advocates, and still less with her estimate of the character of Christ. The programme of Socialism strikes me (so far as I understand it) as unworkable, because it ignores a great many of the facts of human nature; and I am sure you are right in thinking that the true path of progress lies in gradual improvement, and gradual removal of unjust restrictions, rather than in sudden violence and revolution.” To a much more intimate friend she had written about the same time: “Yes, I think —— is what I should call an Agnostic, but perhaps you from lordly heights of orthodoxy don’t appreciate that that differs ‘toto caelo’ from an atheist; and that it is one of the most offensive of errors,—and one frequently made from culpable carelessness,—to substitute the one for the other.” Her appreciation of the Bible increased—and it had always been an exceptional appreciation;—but there are two quotations that stand out in one’s memory as belonging to her in a special sense. She always appropriated to herself with great fervour the prayer of Agur:—“Two things have I required of thee...: Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” And more than once, after quoting the words from Isaiah:—“Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones,” she added almost under her breath, “I am not sure that that is not the finest thing in the whole Bible.” But while she was one of those to whom the Old Testament makes perhaps a special appeal, it was not by accident that at the time of her death, and for years previously, the words were fixed above the mantelpiece, both in her study and in her bedroom,—“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
Some years before leaving Edinburgh, S. J.-B. had a heart attack which caused Dr. Balfour grave uneasiness, and, although she rallied in the course of a week, similar attacks kept recurring at considerable intervals. On one occasion at Windydene she was unconscious for several hours, and finally “came out of blackness” to ask with great calmness, “Well, what do you suppose has happened?” Within a week of this attack she started for the Riviera. It is probable that she never fully realized the seriousness of these cardiac signs and symptoms; but, in one way or another, death knocked at her door pretty frequently during those later years. In 1901-2, she suffered from a mysterious and anomalous “growth,” for which a leading London surgeon refused to operate on the ground that she was a bad subject. She was not sorry for the refusal, but the enemy grew with appalling rapidity, and it became increasingly clear that something would have to be done. All through the period of uncertainty she went on with her life absolutely as usual. “I did wake up one night in a horror of great darkness,” she confessed, “wondering what was going to happen; but very soon Whittier’s words came into my mind: “I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies.... I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.” And then I just turned over on the other side and went to sleep again.” “How thankful we should be,” she said on another occasion, “that we don’t know what is before us. Life is hard enough, it would be much harder if we knew.” When a friend remarked on her courage, she said,—and this was a remark repeated many times before the end of her life,—“No, no. I have been brave sometimes in my life, but not now. There is nothing to be brave about now.” In response one day to a warmer expression of admiration, she almost cried out in protest,—“Oh! ... God be merciful to me a sinner. That is what one feels more and more.” Then, after a pause: Another day she said, “My life here will not be much longer, but I feel that I have not reached the end. I have learnt a great deal, and I have a great deal still to learn. Unless one has absolutely refused to learn, one must get the chance to learn more.” Her friend quoted Thring. “My creed is life. Blessed is life the King, etc.” “Ah,” she said, “I don’t know that it will be better than this life, but it will give us the chance to learn fresh things.” It was on that occasion that she looked death in the face while still in full possession of her powers—“‘I laid me down with a will,’” she said—; but for the moment the sacrifice was not required of her. When the malady reached a point at which surgical interference was at worst a necessary palliative, she proposed to ask two of her own old students to come and undertake an operation. It was represented to her that it was scarcely fair to put so great a responsibility on them,[160] so she wrote to her friend, Mr. Cathcart of Edinburgh, asking him to come and undertake the case. He came at once, of course, and the operation proved a triumphant success.[161] So life was given back to her just as she had laid it down, and the remaining years were in some respects the happiest and most peaceful she had known. She renewed her youth, though in truth she had never grown old, and lived more than ever in the life of her “girls.” She had always said, “Not me, but us.” Now more and more the “us” came into the centre of her scheme of life. Perhaps her last ambition was that some British University should give her its honorary degree, but her friends only realized this when she had already laid the ambition down. “I shall never have a University hood,” she said once or twice quite simply. All the more she enjoyed the glories of the young women doctors who were coming on. She listened to their accounts of what they had learned and of what they had done with an admiration that was nothing short of poignant in its simplicity. Her own share in the whole thing simply dropped out. At most she would say when some gifted visitor was gone, “Wonderful the work she is doing! Well, I did help a little bit once upon a time, didn’t I?” It was when one of her old girls seemed face to face for the first time with that most bitter disappointment in a doctor’s experience,—the loss of a patient for whose life one has fought with repeated recrudescence of hope in the teeth of despair,—that S. J.-B. wrote one of her last letters: “Windydene, 7 p.m. March 19th. 1911. Dear Child, I am so sorry for you, and I think of you so much! It is an experience that has to come to all of us who live in our work,—and we must believe ‘we shall see in heaven why it could not be otherwise.’ Meanwhile ‘the Healer by Gennesaret shall walk thy rounds with thee.’ When it is all over,—for I suppose that is now the end,—I think you should come down here for a few perfectly quiet days. We shall be so glad to have you. Yours sincerely, S. J.-B.” There was, of course, one visitor whom she would fain have welcomed to her “pleasant places.” She had followed Octavia Hill’s life with unfailing interest, and had subscribed to the Derwentwater scheme, and to other of Miss Hill’s beneficent works. In July or August 1910 a letter opposing the extension of the suffrage to women appeared in the Times above the signature of Octavia Hill. S. J.-B. replied to the letter, regretting that Miss Hill should have “given the support of her honoured name” to the negative side of the controversy. The Times did not often refuse a communication from S. J.-B., but on this occasion her letter was not inserted. Perhaps the trifling episode called up memories too insistent to be stilled, for a day or two later she wrote to her old friend: “August 5th. 1910. Windydene, Mark Cross, Sussex. Dear, I wrote enclosed mainly as an answer to yours in the Times, and as it has been sent back to me, crowded out, I send it to you,—to show you another old woman’s point of view. I am rheumatic and lame now, and cannot go about much, but I wish you would come down and spend two or three days with me here on the Sussex hills, and we would thrash out this Suffrage question—surely one of us ought to be able to convince the other! And I should like to see you again! Yours sincerely, S. Jex-Blake. I grieved greatly with you in your loss in June.”[162] Miss Octavia Hill had allowed herself no “sabbatical year,” and she was flagging in harness. Her life had been spent in unremitting service of her fellow men. She answered her old friend’s letter, but she could not respond. One has no difficulty in understanding her attitude now. A conventional meeting would have been useless, and anything else would have involved a greater upheaval than most people are willing to face as life goes on. And it well may be that she had acted wisely all along. As Mrs. Jex-Blake had said many years before with that strange prevision that is given sometimes to the pure in heart,—“God has two great works,—one for her, one for you.” Those two great works could never have been combined. And, indeed, no one with a disposition like S. J.-B.’s can go through life without losing friends. She might have said with St. Teresa,—“For one thing, the devil sometimes fills me with such a harsh and cruel temper; such a spirit of anger and hostility at some people, that I could eat them up and annihilate them.” But, as in the case of St. Teresa, the obverse side of the medal was a capacity for loving that can seldom have been surpassed in our human nature. “Went not my heart with thee...?” she used to say: and it did,—not only with those nearest to her, but with all who appealed to her mother-heart. The comforting letter was written, in spite of all fatigue and inconvenience, at the earliest possible moment: the box of flowers, the grapes, the wine, the cheque, the open hospitable doors,—all seemed messengers waiting for their turn, like the swift-heeled servants of the Fairy Queen. No appeal ever came to her that she ignored. The Charity Organisation Society was familiar with her name; and great sometimes was her disappointment when those she wanted to help were pronounced hopeless or unworthy. Nothing that she loved ever grew old. Her friends, her horses,—even the purely material things to which she was attached—grew more beautiful in her eyes as their market value decreased. She always parted deliberately with the flowers that had stood by her hand. No one was ever allowed to throw them away as a matter of routine, and often she would raise them to her lips before putting them in the fire. St. Teresa’s love no doubt was a more transcendent thing. It was her lot to live in an age of faith. S. J.-B. often quoted Whittier’s Autograph: “If of the Law’s stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept for man the last. Through mortal lapse and dulness What lacks the Eternal Fulness, If still our weakness can Love Him in loving man?” There are those of whom Teresa herself said: “They may have more merit in His eyes than their more favoured neighbours, because their obedience and their faith and their love have cost them more. Their Lord deals with them as with strong and valiant men, appointing them travail and trouble here, that they may fight for Him the good fight of faith, and only come in for the prize at the end.” No portrait gives any adequate idea of Sophia Jex-Blake. Someone who saw her first in 1886 writes: “Although too stout in figure, she had a fine commanding presence, and one was struck at once by the exceeding comeliness of her face. It was strong, wise and benevolent, capable of an extraordinary range of expression. The brow was ideally shaped, broad and serene in repose, though always liable to the summer lightnings that one half admired, half dreaded. Her hair was growing white, but the eyebrows remained black till the end, and the eyes, both by nature and by the long discipline of life, were extraordinarily fine and expressive.” It was twenty years later than this that a girl friend said,—“She has the look of one ‘following fearlessly’.” Throughout life, the tendency to sadness of expression was wholly contradicted by her smile; her eyes very readily bubbled over with merriment; as some reporter had said in the days of the fight, “With those dimples she must be good-natured.” When an old servant was shown the final portrait in this volume, she said, “But I want her to look up at me and laugh as she used to do!”
One does not wish to dwell on the history of the last few months. From the physical point of view it is a familiar story. One by one every medicament lost its efficacy: the failing heart ceased to invigorate one organ after another. But the strong and disciplined will held the shattered tabernacle together. Sometimes acute symptoms forced her to stay in bed for a day or two, but she always struggled on to her feet again at the earliest possible moment and went for the daily drive through her beloved lanes and woods. True that towards the end she noticed these less and less,—drowsed most of the way; but, if there was occasion to rouse herself and speak to anyone, she did so almost as of old. “The worst of lying awake at night,” she used to say whimsically, “is that one realizes all the mistakes one has made in one’s life.” It was not even lying awake sometimes: it was a weary sitting up or lying down as each position in turn became intolerable. And often, after only three minutes’ unconsciousness, she would exclaim in something like the old happy voice, “I have had such a lovely sleep!” Almost to the last day she repeated bits of her favourite poems and psalms,—and nothing gave her so much pleasure as to plan holidays for those who still had a day’s work before them. She was infinitely mindful of those who tended her. Almost her last words were,—“Now do go and have a good rest.” And so the end came,—suddenly but not unexpectedly. She sat down one day more tired than usual—it was the 7th January, 1912—stretched herself back, and rendered up her soul to God who gave it.
A great wave of feeling arose in the village and round about when it was known that the familiar figure of the old warrior would no more be seen in her Sussex lanes. Perplexed at first, her neighbours of all classes had come in a measure to understand her, to be proud of her,—some of them to love her. With one or two, indeed, she had formed a warm and intimate friendship. There was every token of respectful sympathy and mourning when the little procession made its way to Rotherfield Church.[163] And that wave of feeling went out over the whole world. Messages and tributes of appreciation and regret poured steadily in. The most beautiful and adequate was the paragraph in the Pall Mall Gazette: “The woman as Happy Warrior has passed away with the death in her Sussex home of Sophia Jex-Blake. There is scarcely an attribute of the great figure in Wordsworth’s poem which she did not possess, with the crowning added happiness of seeing her fame as a noble and successful pioneer in a great movement finally established. She it was, more than anyone else, who compelled the gates of the medical profession to be opened to women. Through years of hostility and obloquy she never lost heart in her Cause; and, meeting violence with reason and coarseness with dignity, she won at last. Her longest and bitterest fight was with the University of Edinburgh; and, later, when Parliament had recognized the right of women to be doctors, it was in that city that she practised for twenty-one years. Since the death of Florence Nightingale no woman has died of whom more truly may it be written, Bene actÆ vitÆ recordatio jucundissima est. But the reader may find a special propriety in a very simple resolution passed a few days later in an Over Seas dominion: “That the members of the University Women’s Club of Toronto do place on record their deep sense of the great influence and noble life of Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake. Now that her distinguished career has closed, they feel that she was the helper of all University women,—and they love her for many reasons.” The End APPENDIX A
PEDIGREE OF THE JEX-BLAKE FAMILY S. J.-B.’s father was one of the Blakes of Bunwell, Scottow, etc., in the county of Norfolk. A family of Blakes settled at Bunwell in 1620. It is said traditionally that they came from Somersetshire and were descended from the same family as Robert Blake, the great Admiral of the Commonwealth, being probably a branch of the original family of the Blaks, Blaaks or Blakes of Pinnels in the parish of Cawne or Calne, Co. Wilts., there seated as early, at least, as 1400. These families bore the same arms with slight differences, namely, argent a chevron between three garbs sable. Crest, on a chapeau gules turned up ermine, a martlet argent. In the chancel of Bunwell Church, near the altar rails, is a tombstone with the following inscription: Under this Stone lyeth the Body of Mr John Blake He dyed the 21 of August 1686 being sixtie 4 Yeares of age and upwards. Above this legend are the arms of Blake as above: on the chevron a fleur-de-lis for difference. From this gentleman is descended in direct line all the present family through his fourth son, Robert Blake, who settled at Scottow about 1680, marrying Margaret, eldest daughter of William Durrant of Scottow Hall. Their son, Thomas Blake of Scottow, born November 7th, 1689, married Elizabeth, daughter of John Jex, Esq. of Lowestoft, and the grandson of these last, William Blake of Swanton Abbots, in the Commission of the Peace, and Deputy Lieutenant for Norfolk, having inherited the chief part of the Jex property, obtained on his petition by Royal Licence on August 17th, 1837, that he and his descendants should assume and use the surname Jex in addition to and before that of Blake, and also bear the arms of Jex quarterly, in the second quarter, with those of Blake.[164] APPENDIX B
“WORDS FOR THE WAY.”[165]—No. 2. REST “There remaineth a Rest for the people of God.”—Heb. iv. 9. What is the thing that you wish for most in the world? I cannot hear your answers to my question, and I do not suppose that everyone to whom it is addressed would answer it in the same way; but I must try and fancy to myself what you would be most likely to say. And first I suppose that each of you would be likely to wish for that of which he has most felt the need. Some of you, perhaps, who are very poor, would say, “Money.” Well, money is a very good thing, and, if we know how to use it rightly, a great blessing for which to thank God when He gives it to us; but you might have money, and yet be far from happy—yet have a great many of your deepest wants unsatisfied. And very many of those who have most money would be the first to tell you that this is the case; and I am sure that with very little of it, it is possible to be very happy if we have some other things. I hardly think that money is what we should wish for most. Those of you who are very ill, and who are constantly suffering pain that seems to be always coming freshly upon you, would perhaps say, “Health.” Well, that too is a very good and great gift of God’s, and those of us who have it should thank Him very much for it, and pity heartily and helpfully those who have it not. But I think that with even this blessing, there may be very great wants left; and I believe that it is possible to be very blessed without it. I do not think that Health satisfies the deepest want of our nature. And some of you perhaps, who have felt how sad it is to be ignorant of many things that it would be so good to know, and who are longing to learn more about God and His great and wonderful works, might say that “Knowledge” was the gift which of all others you desire. Some again who have felt how sad it is to stand all alone in this great world, every part of which God has made so dependent on the rest,—who long for some heart to lean upon in all life’s troubles, some hand to help to cut a way through them, will say that “Love” is the greatest blessing that it seems to them possible to receive. I have no doubt that if I were really talking to you, or, still better, could see the thoughts of your hearts, I should be told of many wants which you earnestly desire to have satisfied,—wants, some of them belonging to the lower and some of them to the higher part of that wonderful nature which God has given to us all. And now perhaps you would like to hear my answer to this question I have been asking of you, “What is the thing we most want?” It seems to me that there is one blessing which sums up in itself—which seems to imply or to contain—almost all others, and which, if we go deeply enough into it, does really satisfy all the great wants of our nature. This is Rest. Now let us think what Rest is: and see whether if you had that, you would have the deepest part of all your wants satisfied. You said you wanted Money? Well, was not the comfort which you thought money could give you, just that freedom from care and anxiety which we call Rest?—was it not really for this, and not for the money itself, you longed? And you wanted Health? Is it not just because health would give you rest from pain and from continual weariness that it seems to you the best of all things? Does not Health for you really mean Rest? And is it not because there is something that you are always longing to know and understand that you desire so much to have Knowledge? Is not your wish for it founded on the feeling that God gave you a mind and understanding which can only be satisfied by learning and knowing. Do you not really desire knowledge that your intellect may have some firm standing ground?—that it too may have Rest? And most of all do not you who long for Love, long for it because you feel that to have some one beside you to feel for you and help you, to pray with and work with you through all the labours of this life, is the nearest approach to Rest that we can have on earth, except that deepest Rest which comes through feeling the constant nearness of Him who loves most of all, who “will never leave thee nor forsake thee” (Heb. xiii. 5). If then we can but look forward to Rest, are we not sure of having all that we need? And it is just this that is promised to us in the text we read at the beginning, “There remaineth a Rest for the people of God.” God knows so well all our wants, and knows so well what will best supply them, that all through the Bible you will find beautiful promises about Rest. Let us look at a few of them. Job in the midst of his great troubles speaks of the future life as that “where the weary are at Rest” (Job. iii. 17). The prophet Jeremiah promises to those who will hear God’s will and seek to do it, that they “shall find Rest for their souls” (Jer. vi. 16). Our Lord Jesus Christ knew well about this deepest want in our nature when He spoke that most beautiful of invitations to all who heard Him on earth, and to all who read His words now, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find Rest unto your souls” (Matt. xi. 28, 29). And the whole argument of the chapter from which the text we are talking about is taken, is this, “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His Rest, any of us should seem to come short of it” (Heb. iv. 1). But now let us ask what is implied or meant by those last words about “coming short of it?” What is meant by our Lord’s telling people that they must “take His yoke upon them” and be “meek and lowly of heart” if they would find Rest? What is meant when Rest is promised specially to the “people of God”?God”? Now, if we believe that God loves us as He does, quite infinitely—more than we can even understand—we may be quite sure that He will always give us every good thing that He can—that He will never put any limit to His promises if He can help it—that He would like to give Rest and all other good things to everyone if it were possible. We must never doubt for one moment God’s willingness to give us all good things, and to do all for us that it is possible for love to do. Remember what Christ says about that, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven know how to give good things to them that ask Him (Matt. vii. 11). And again, “I say not that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you” (John xvi. 26, 27). And St. Paul tells us that “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?” (Rom. viii. 32). So you see that we may be quite sure that if we do not get this great blessing, Rest, it will not be because God is not willing to give it to us. But there are certain great principles, which we call laws, which govern God’s world, which are of the very nature of God’s own being, and the more we come to know and realize about these laws, the more we shall find them to be the most wonderfully good and beautiful and blessed ones which could be imagined, and see in every one of them some great and glorious provision for the best possible things, which could not come without them. Now you know God made man in His own image (Gen. i. 27), and, though man afterwards broke that beautiful image and lost the perfect likeness that God had given him to Himself—(as we are told in Eccles. vii. 29, “God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions”)—still man is so deep a partaker of God’s nature, that the truest and deepest part of him is that which is like God and akin to Him, so that St. Paul tells us, “In God we live, and move, and have our being ... for we are also his offspring” (Acts xvii. 28). Now just because our whole blessedness, and our only hope of returning at last to the perfect image in which God made us, lies in our trying to get nearer and nearer to God, and to become more and more like Him, so that our Lord Jesus bids us “Be perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. v. 48)—just because of this, I say, one of the great and merciful laws of God is that none of us shall ever find any true happiness apart from goodness; and no one can hope for Rest who does not seek it in the way of striving to do God’s will. Some one has said that the true Rest of the soul is attained only when God’s will is our will. So we are told by Isaiah, that “There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked” (Isa. lvii. 21). And “the wicked” do not mean those only who do great and shameful sins, which seem very terrible even to us, but all who do not strive in everything to do God’s will. Let us look a little more closely at what this will of God’s is. We are told in the Old Testament what it is. Look at Isaiah i. 16, 17, “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of thy doing from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” And again, look at Micah vi. 8, “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” And when we come to the New Testament, we find Our Lord Jesus Christ telling men who those are whom God blesses—what it is to do God’s will: “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers.” (See Matt. v.) And while He says that that man only “shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,” who “doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. vii. 21), He explains that will to be, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.... This do and thou shalt live” (Luke x. 27, 28). So that if that Rest seems to us a great and glorious thing to attain, we must seek it in God’s way; we must try to do God’s will here, that we may rest in perfect harmony and agreement with that will hereafter. Is it not a wonderful and beautiful thing that God loves us so much that He will not let us be otherwise than good?—that He will not cease to remind us by constant unhappiness and restlessness that we are not fulfilling our highest end, till we strive day by day to come nearer to Him; so that at last, in that great happy day of Rest, there will be no more striving; for “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Would you like to hear once more those words, which I daresay you know so well, and which tell us better than any others have ever done, what that Rest shall be, and how it shall satisfy all our wants at last, as “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.” Let us turn to the Revelation of St. John, and hear the description he gives of those who have entered into Rest: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.... And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Rev. vii. 16, 17; xxi. 3, 4; xxii. 5, 14). APPENDIX C
CONCLUSIONS FROM “A VISIT TO AMERICAN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES” “The two features of American education which strike an Englishman as characteristic, are, the union of all classes in the same schools and of both sexes in the same colleges; the first being nearly universal throughout the Northern States; the second still exceptional, and as regards public opinion, still on probation. I. That no disadvantages attend the system of mingling all classes in school can hardly, I suppose, be maintained, though it may be thought that the advantages greatly preponderate.... So far as distinctions and consequent separations of rank depend on merely external circumstances, such as wealth and position, I do not believe that we gain much by observing them; but when they rest on real differences of culture and refinement, the case becomes different, and it does not seem good policy to risk certain loss to one class, without being sure of securing a more than proportionate gain to another. In short it seems to me that, if we can mingle different classes of children in such proportions and under such conditions as to ensure that the higher standard shall prevail over the lower, and the tone of all be raised to that of the foremost few, the measure must be an altogether good one: and I am sure that to some extent and under some restrictions this may be done: but if once the inferior standard of refinement is allowed to predominate, the lower dragging down the higher rather than being raised by it, I fear that no results gained can pay for the loss accruing. II. With regard to the joint education of the sexes, it seems to be pretty clearly established that, in America at least, this system can prosper for years without any markedly evil effects as to the morals and manners of the fellow-students, and the evidence of most professors and teachers goes strongly to show that, on the contrary, the mutual influence exerted is usually very beneficial. It seems also to be proved that at least a considerable number of women can undertake and successfully complete the same course of study that is usual for men, and that without more apparent detriment to their health than students of the other sex. The general issue divides itself into three practical questions: (a) whether men and women shall pursue the same course of study; (b) whether they shall continue it to the same point; and (c) whether their studies, if identical, shall be pursued together.... (a) If there is no fundamental education answering to the needs of common humanity, and, therefore, equally necessary both for men and women,—it follows that the difference of sex is more radical and more essential than is the common humanity that underlies it.... Women have, I think, from the earliest times, suffered from the fact of men’s pretensions to ‘evolve out of their moral consciousness the idea of’ a woman,—which idea has not by any means always happened to correspond with the facts that might, perhaps, afford a surer guide.... It might perhaps be shown that those who, starting with their ‘evolved idea’ of a woman, deny that the same education may safely be given to each sex because of the vast essential differences of nature, are in point of fact more incredulous of the reality of that difference than those who hold the opposite views.... The naturalist will not fear to lay meat and hay before horses and lions, cows and tigers, for neither will the lion be seduced by the offer of hay, nor will the horse and cow lose their distinctive characteristics because they both partake of it..... I do not by any means intend to say that I desire to see the education of all women made identical with that at present given to men. It must first be proved that that education is, in truth, the best and most desirable for the human being, before we can wish to make it universal. But I do say that what is ultimately decided by the wisdom of ages to be the best possible form of culture for one human nature, must be so for another, for our common humanity lies deeper in all, and is more essential in each, than any differences. I do not believe that women are to be ‘educated to be wives and mothers’ in any sense in which it is not equally imperative to educate boys to be husbands and fathers. I believe that each human being, developed to his or her best and utmost, will most perfectly fulfil the duties that God may appoint in each case, and if teachers and parents have ever before their eyes the aim of making good, true, and sensible women, I do not fear but they will also train the best wives and mothers.... (b) I confess that I have been surprised in America to find how much study young women do seem able to accomplish without material injury, but I do not know how much allowance to make for possible differences of national constitution.... My own belief, founded mainly on observation of English girls, is, that in quickness of intellect they in no way fall behind their brothers, and that during one or two hours’ study of any subject they would be quite able to keep up with them, but that after a certain time their physical powers flag,—sooner perhaps than those of boys,—and that a long continued strain is apt to be injurious to them. I state this opinion with great diffidence, however, for many of my fellow-teachers and friends assert the contrary.... Above all, be the limits of study what they may, let whatever is done be done thoroughly, so that the only too well deserved reproach of superficiality and incompleteness may at length be removed from our system of female education. Work half done is not merely unsatisfactory, it is absolutely injurious to the moral and mental health of the worker; and I believe it is better to omit any and every study altogether, than to allow a pupil to skim over it so as to gather together a string of words thereto relating, with no solid meaning or knowledge lying beneath. (c) The third question,—whether men and women shall pursue their studies together,—I do not much care to discuss, for I am by no means sure of having sufficient data whereon to rest any opinion, and moreover it seems to me not vital to the general issue. So long as men and women can each obtain an absolutely good education, it does not appear very material whether they get it in company or not,—not material, that is, as regards the education, whatever may be the case as to the social results. But one thing does seem to me important, viz. that not merely a similar but an identical standard should exist for all, whether it be the many or the few who avail themselves of it. This fixed standard does exist for men, being represented by the examinations and degrees of the Universities, and that the same facilities should be thrown open to women does seem to me vitally important. I have already said that I should not care to see all women aim at so high a mark; nor do I believe that, for many years, a large number would present themselves for examination. But that those who do, by earnest study, attain to the prescribed standard, should be excluded from recognition of the fact, seems to be manifestly unjust and wrong. Universities hold, I suppose, in some sense a national trust, and that trust involves all possible aid to the cause of education throughout the land.” APPENDIX D
THE EDINBURGH EXTRA-MURAL SCHOOL The Edinburgh Extra-Mural classes are medical classes conducted by fully qualified and authorized lecturers other than the University professors. They prepare students primarily for the examinations of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, but their certificates are, as a matter of fact, accepted by many examining bodies. The history of the association of these classes with the University is—briefly—as follows: In 1840 Professor Syme begged the Town Council of Edinburgh, who were then the recognized patrons of the University, to order the recognition of extra-mural classes, an argument for the innovation being “that one of the professors was so comparatively inefficient that many students, after paying his fee and obtaining his certificate of attendance, went to learn his subject elsewhere.” In 1842 the Town Council ordained that four Extra-Mural classes should be allowed to count for graduation,—the classes to be chosen by each student at his discretion. The Medical Faculty of the University refused to consent to this except on the condition that any student taking such classes should have a year added to his curriculum. The Town Council refused this condition, and the Senatus, supporting the Medical Faculty, referred the matter to the Court of Law. In 1850 judgment was given against the Senatus; they appealed to the Inner House, but the judgment was confirmed in 1852. An appeal was taken to the House of Lords, but again in 1854 the Town Council gained the day. In 1855 the regulations came into operation and have ever since remained in force. APPENDIX E
LETTER TO THE TIMES IN REPLY TO MRS. GARRETT ANDERSON “To the Editor of the Times. Sir,—I have only just seen the letter from Dr. Garrett Anderson which you published on the 5th inst., and I venture to beg that you will allow me to point out my reasons for thinking she has selected the very worst of all the alternatives suggested, when she advises Englishwomen to go abroad for medical education. In the first place, I think that Dr. Anderson assumes greatly too much in supposing that all the Scotch Universities are permanently closed to women by the recent decision, especially when notice has already been given in Parliament that a Scotch member will, at the beginning of next Session, bring in a Bill to enable those Universities both to teach and examine female students. Even if no such Bill were announced, it would, I suppose, be open to every Scotch University at this moment to obtain the necessary powers merely by application for the sanction of the Queen in Council, as it was repeatedly stated, both by the defenders in the late suit and by those Judges who gave decisions in their favour, that it was merely the absence of Royal authority for recent changes which rendered those changes illegal. I think there is very good ground to hope that this course may be taken by one or more of the other Universities, even if Edinburgh is content to rest quietly under the imputations on her good faith which can hardly be effaced in any other way. Even if the Scotch Universities are left out of the question, those of Cambridge and London may well be expected to move in a matter like the present; or it would hardly seem unreasonable to hope that some of the surplus revenues in Ireland might be applied in one way or other to the solution of the present difficulty. I think, moreover, that Mrs. Anderson concedes very much more than has yet been proved when she states that the examining bodies, such as the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, ‘have the power to refuse to admit women to their examinations and qualifications.’ That they have the will to do so may, I fear, only be too probable, but it is at least a very open question whether such power does lie in their hands. I have been assured on very good authority that this is not the case, and at any rate I believe no decision to that effect has ever been given by a Court of Law. Certainly the prim facie assumption would be the other way. The Medical Act of 1858 in no way excludes women from the profession, and two women are actually registered under its provisions. It is, therefore, hardly credible, that when all candidates are by the Act required to submit to certain examinations, the Examining Boards should at their option be able to turn away all applicants who are not of the male sex, no mention of any such power being contained in the Act itself; nor, I think, need we assume even a desire to exclude women on the part of all the Examining Boards until application has been made to each individually; and this has never, so far as I am aware, been done at present. I trust, therefore, that I have shown that Mrs. Anderson’s advice that all Englishwomen desiring to study medicine should at once expatriate themselves is premature in the extreme; I hope further to show that it is moreover radically erroneous in principle. Even if it should ultimately be proved (as is at present by no means the case) that women cannot obtain official examination in this country, and therefore cannot enter their names on the Register, it would still, I think, be very far from certain that their best plan was to seek such examination abroad, seeing that after having spent years of labour and much money they would, as regards legal recognition, be exactly as far as ever from gaining their end. Mrs. Anderson says that they would at least obtain ‘what is denied them in their own country, a first-class medical education.’ If it were true that such an education could not be got without going abroad, there would, no doubt, be much force in this argument, but I submit that this is not the case. Without stopping to consider the alternatives brought forward by your correspondent herself—the establishment of a new school for women or the purchase of one of the existing hospital schools—either of which seems to me infinitely preferable, Mrs. Anderson quite overlooks the fact that at this moment medical classes of first-rate quality can be obtained in Edinburgh in the Extra-Mural school (many of whose lecturers stand much higher than the University professors in public estimation),[166] and that with very little trouble a complete curriculum of medical study could be there arranged, without altering any of the existing conditions of affairs. The doors of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary have also been thrown open to women, though under some restrictions, and excellent clinical instruction is given to them there by two of the best and most popular teachers in the city. Can any one doubt that when so much has been secured, and when every year promises increased facilities, it is infinitely better that Englishwomen should study medicine under the direction of their own countrymen, in their own language, and amid the social and hygienic conditions which will occur in their own future practice, rather than in a foreign land, from lecturers who teach in a strange language and in hospitals where all the arrangements and theories vary from those of this country, and where even the types of disease may be so far modified as greatly to lessen the value of the instruction for those who intend to practise medicine in Great Britain? In point of fact, the question of medical education in this country may be already considered solved, even if we grant the necessity of attending lectures on every subject in the medical curriculum. It is, however, worth remark that many of the very first men in the profession are becoming more and more strongly in favour of free trade in study—i.e., of allowing every student to obtain his knowledge as he pleases, whether from books or from lectures, requiring only final evidence of satisfactory results. It may be that on investigation the present system will be found to rest rather on the ‘vested interests’ of teachers than on the needs of students, and, if so, the question of medical education for women will be still further simplified. At present, however, it is not needful to argue that question. I have shown that provision for the education of women after the present fashion is to a great extent already made, and that, for purposes of instruction at least, it is quite unnecessary for them to expatriate themselves. With regard to examination, the case seems to me equally clear. No foreign diploma or degree is at present acknowledged as qualifying for registration in this country, and though it may be well for those who covet such ornamental honours to go through the examinations requisite to obtain them, I cannot see any ground on which it would be worth the while of most Englishwomen to live for years abroad to arrive at a result so eminently unpractical. We live under English law, and to English law we must conform, so far as lies in our power; if we are arbitrarily precluded from such compliance it is to the English Government that we must look for a remedy. I can imagine few things that would please our opponents better than to see one Englishwoman after another driven out of her own country to obtain medical education abroad, both because they know that, on her return after years of labour, she can claim no legal recognition whatever, and because they are equally certain that, so long as no means of education are provided at home, only a very small number of women will ever seek admission to the profession. I do not say that a woman may not be justified in going abroad for education if her circumstances make it imperative that she should as soon as possible enter upon medical practice; but I do say, and I most firmly believe, that every woman who consents to be thus exiled does more harm than can easily be calculated to the general cause of medical women in this country, and postpones indefinitely, so far as in her lies, the final and satisfactory solution of the whole question. It is not an easy thing to remember at all times that but I do believe profoundly that at this moment the very best service we can do to the cause in which we are all interested is to make use of every opportunity open to us in this country to qualify ourselves as thoroughly as possible for the profession we have chosen, and then (refusing resolutely to be driven into byways or unauthorized measures) to demand, quietly but firmly, that provision for our ultimate recognition as medical practitioners which we have a right to expect at the hands of the Legislature. Mrs. Anderson seems to think it hopeless that the present Parliament should ‘promote the interests of an unrepresented class,’ but it must be remembered that one of the very strongest arguments against granting the franchise to women has always been that their substantial interests are and will be provided for by the existing Government, and a case like the present will certainly afford a crucial test of the truth of these assertions. If they be true, we cannot doubt that Parliament will in its next Session make full provision for a case of such almost unexampled hardship; and if, on the other hand, this be not done, the argument above referred to can hardly be again brought forward when the suffrage for women shall again be claimed. Let me, therefore, conclude, as I began, by protesting as strongly as lies in my power against this idea of sending abroad every Englishwoman who wishes to study medicine; let me entreat all such women to join the class already formed in Edinburgh, the great majority of whose members are thoroughly of one mind with me in this matter, and who, having counted the cost, are, like myself, thoroughly resolved to ‘fight it out on this line,’ and neither to be driven out of our own country for education nor to be induced to cease to make every effort in our power to obtain from the Legislature that measure of justice which we imperatively need, and which is, in point of fact, substantially implied in the provisions of the Medical Act of 1858. I am, Sir, yours obediently, Sophia Jex-Blake. 15, Buccleuch-place, Edinburgh. Aug. 8.” APPENDIX F
LETTER FROM THE PRINCIPAL OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, AND S. J.-B.’S REPLY LADY STUDENTS AT EDINBURGH To the Editor of the Times. Sir,—In your article on the medical education of women, under date the 23rd inst., you give utterance to reproaches against the University of Edinburgh, which appear to me to be undeserved, and which I feel sure you would not have admitted had the full circumstances of the case been before you. May I be allowed as briefly as possible to indicate what seems to me to be a correct view of those circumstances? You say: “It was next thought that an opening for female medical students might be found or made at the University of Edinburgh, and a few were for a time actually received there. The Professors, however, were greatly divided upon the question, and those who were opposed to the necessary concessions threw every possible difficulty in the way of those who wished to make them. After much quarrelling and litigation, and after transactions which reflected very little credit on the University, a legal decision adverse to the ladies was finally given by a bare majority of Scottish Judges, and will remain binding unless carried by appeal to the House of Lords. Under these circumstances the ladies were placed in a position of great hardship and difficulty.” I acknowledge and regret the hardship and difficulty of the position in which the ladies referred to have been placed; but this is owing to the state of the law of the land as interpreted by the Court of Session, and not to any discreditable transactions on the part of the University. I admit the manifestation, during the history of this question, of a partisan feeling both for and against the medical ladies, to some extent within the University itself, but far more in the outside public of Edinburgh; but I confidently assert that the main body of the Professors were not partisans on either side, and that the general feeling was a desire to give facilities for medical study to women, so far as this could be done consistently with the maintenance of academical good order. Again, it must be remembered that the Professors do not constitute or govern the University. The governing body is the University Court, consisting of eight members (of whom only one is a Professor), headed at present by Sir William Stirling Maxwell, as rector. I utterly deny the appearance of any unworthy feeling in the way in which this Court dealt with the questions relating to female medical education which came before it. The University was solicited in 1869 to admit ladies, as an experiment, to the lectures of Medical Professors. There was a certain amount of opposition to this request, but the feeling of the majority in each of the constitutive bodies of the University was in favour of conceding under necessary restrictions what was asked. In one of the debates on the subject it was indeed suggested that such a concession should not be made without clearly ascertaining beforehand whether we had the power of ultimately conferring degrees upon women, should it be found on experiment that they succeeded in completing their medical curriculum and in passing the examinations. But such a delay was deprecated by the supporters of the application; it was urged that such an inquiry would be premature, as what was asked for the present was only that trial might be made of ladies in the capacity of medical students. I need hardly point out that these representations were dictated by the policy of “getting in the thin end of the wedge.” And far better for all parties, more prudent, and more consistent with the dignity of the University, would it have been, had we resisted this policy, and refused to take any step before endeavouring to ascertain our powers in respect of the graduation of women. But the University Court yielded to an impulse of liberality, and proceeded at once to frame regulations forbidding mixed classes, but permitting any professor of medicine to hold separate classes for the medical instruction of women. The applicants appeared satisfied with what was done for them; and I must say that it would then have been in their power to ascertain beforehand how many of the Professors were prepared to institute classes for them. The ladies must not now throw on the University all the blame of their disappointment, for they were not without sufficient warning that only a limited number of such classes, far short of a full curriculum, would be provided for them. The regulations said not a word of graduation or of a full course of study; they were merely permissive, and, as had been requested, tentative. But the ladies preferred to enter at once upon such lectures as they could get, trusting, apparently, to the chapter of accidents. To several of the Medical Professors it would have been impossible to open full course lectures for ladies, in addition to their ordinary duties. Some had already on hand the teaching of more than 300 students, not only by lectures, but also by daily demonstrations for many hours in the laboratory or dissecting-room. Others had extensive and important medical practice to attend to, being sought out by patients from all parts of the country. Altogether three of the Medical Professors opened classes for ladies, and of these one has had his health seriously broken down by the labour, and the two others have both declared that the burden of such extra duty was more than they could continue to bear. Under these circumstances, the medical ladies applied that substitutes might be appointed to lecture to them in the place of such Professors as might be unable, or unwilling, to give them instruction. Now, for the first time, the University determined to seek legal advice. An impartial statement of the case was drawn up and submitted to the Solicitor-General for Scotland, with the question whether such measures as the ladies now asked were within the competency of the University? The opinion of the Solicitor-General was very strongly given, and went even beyond the exact point inquired on; it was to the effect that any step tending towards the graduation of women would be beyond the powers of the University. This opinion paralyzed the action of the University. The University Court informed the ladies, on further application from them, that it was debarred by this opinion from promoting their graduation until the legality of such graduation could be established, but it offered to make, in the meantime, arrangements for their full medical instruction, and it was suggested to the friends of the ladies that an amicable suit should be instituted with a view of ascertaining the law. These offers were rejected, and a suit was brought by the ladies against the Chancellor and Professors of the University, which has terminated, thus far, in a judgment that it is not within the powers of the University to confer a degree upon a woman. This, Sir, is in brief the history of an unhappy affair, in which the University certainly made the mistake of consenting to an experimental arrangement which was strongly urged upon them, and for this it has been most severely punished. But I doubt if there is anything in what has occurred which can be called a “transaction reflecting little credit on the University,” with one exception—namely, that on one occasion some of the students misbehaved themselves and insulted the medical ladies. But I must say that this lamentable occurrence was occasioned by those ladies having transgressed the regulations of the University Court, and having joined a mixed class in anatomy under an extra academical lecturer. This outraged the feeling or prejudices of the students. In conclusion, Sir, I sincerely sympathize in the earnest appeal made by Miss Jex-Blake, in the very able letter which forms the subject of your article, to the Legislature to take up the consideration of the medical education of women. It is a subject well worthy the attention of the Legislature, and one which can only be properly dealt with, as a general social subject, by the Legislature. Whether or not an University is a suitable institution for the medical instruction and examination of women is a wide question on which I will not venture to enter. But, however this be decided, all other Universities of the United Kingdom must share in the decision of the University of Edinburgh, and this University will loyally bear her part in carrying out whatever Parliament may ordain as expedient. In the meantime, under considerable obloquy, she can at all events claim to have contributed something in the way of experience to the elucidation of the question. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, A. Grant, Principal. August 27. To the Editor of the Times. Sir,—As Sir Alexander Grant, as representative of the University of Edinburgh, has thought fit to lay before your readers a statement respecting that University and its lady students which is, to use the mildest term, imperfect in the extreme, I trust to your justice to allow me to supplement his narrative with such additional facts as he has not thought it desirable to make public. Sir Alexander states that in 1869 the University was “solicited to admit ladies as an experiment to the lectures of the medical professors,” and further on speaks of the regulations as being, “as was requested, tentative.” He implies that all that followed was in compliance with this request, the claim to graduation being altogether an afterthought on the part of the ladies. Now, the real fact is that in March, 1869, I personally did request admission to medical lectures on these terms, but though the application was granted by the Senatus it was refused by the University Court on the express ground of the inexpediency of making any such “temporary arrangement in the interest of one lady.” About three months later four other ladies joined me in making a new and altogether different application—viz., that the University “would sanction the matriculation of women as medical students, and their admission to the usual examinations, on the understanding that separate classes be formed for their instruction.” At the same time (June 21, 1869) I addressed a formal letter to the Lord Rector of the University urging the same proposal, and asking that, if separate classes could be formed, women should be “allowed to matriculate in the usual way, and to undergo the ordinary examinations, with a view to obtain medical degrees in due course.” Our new proposal was successively submitted to all the different authorities of the University, and received the assent of all—viz., of the Medical Faculty, the Senatus Academicus, the University Court, the University Council, and the Chancellor—and, after five months of consultation and consideration, regulations were, in November, 1869, framed and issued “for the education of women in medicine in the University,” these regulations being henceforth incorporated in the official University Calendar. The first of these regulations states that “women shall be admitted to the study of medicine in the University”; in the fourth regulation exceptional provision is made for “women not intending to study medicine professionally”; and the sixth regulation ordains that “all women attending such classes shall be subject to all the regulations now or at any time in force in the University as to the matriculation of students, their attendance on classes, examination, or otherwise.” As the decision by which a bare majority of the Scotch Judges absolved the University of Edinburgh from all responsibility towards its matriculated lady students rests on the assumption that the University Court exceeded its legal powers in passing the above regulations, it may be worth while to state that the University Court comprised at that time the then Lord Advocate of Scotland (who is now Lord Justice Clerk), and also the previous Lord Advocate, Mr. Gordon, and that the regulations in question were confirmed by the Chancellor, who happens to be, as Lord Justice General of Scotland, the highest legal authority in the country. It is certainly a tolerably striking instance of the “glorious uncertainty of the law,” that the two highest Judges in the land should concur in an action which is subsequently declared by a majority of their brethren to be illegal. Sir Alexander further goes on to suggest that we might have ascertained beforehand how many of the Professors would be willing to hold separate classes for our benefit. The answer to this is twofold. In the first place, no less than four of the medical Professors have been changed since my first application was made, and in every case the change has, as regards our interests, been for the worse. One of those Professors whose loss we have most to deplore is Sir James Simpson, whose generous liberality made him always ready to espouse the weaker cause, and whose strong sense of justice would have made him always our strenuous supporter in the councils of the University. Had he been spared, it is, indeed, more than possible that the whole history of the past four years would have been different. On these losses it was impossible for us to calculate; nor could we (before we learnt the full bitterness of professional rancour) have foreseen that those Professors who were themselves unable or unwilling to teach us would absolutely refuse their assent to every one of the alternative measures by which others might have been enabled to give us the necessary instructions. It is hardly necessary to allude to your correspondent’s rather apocryphal statement that the stupendous labour of giving two lectures a day (which is habitually undergone by Professors in the Arts Faculty) has ruined the health of one medical Professor and seriously endangered that of two more. Suffice it to say that these facts are, to say the least of it, quite new to me, and that, did space permit, I think a very different version of the circumstances might be given. As Sir Alexander has thought fit to refer to the students’ riot in November, 1871 (though to my mind it is very far from the most discreditable episode in this history), I think it right distinctly to deny the interpretation he puts upon the event. It is true that the riot did occur while we were attending an extra-mural class of anatomy (we having utterly failed to obtain a private class, though we had offered a fee of a hundred and fifty guineas for one), but the rioters were, with few exceptions, not our fellow-students at all, but a mob of University students who had been summoned together by a missive circulated in the University class-rooms. The real truth was that the riot was deliberately got up simply and solely in the hope of frightening certain friendly infirmary managers from admitting us to their wards, and perhaps also of frightening us by showers of foul words and of street mud from pursuing our studies any further. Fortunately, the chivalrous device was not permanently successful in either direction. I pass on, however, to notice the statements made respecting the recent lawsuit and the events immediately preceding it. Sir Alexander says that when the University “for the first time sought legal advice” the authorities obtained an opinion adverse to the ladies’ claims from the Solicitor-General. As that opinion has never been published, there is no opportunity for its discussion; but Sir Alexander appears entirely to forget the fact that an opinion to the exactly contrary effect was delivered by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, who takes official precedence of the Solicitor-General, and that that opinion was not only submitted to the University Court, but published more than once in the newspapers and elsewhere. In that opinion the Lord Advocate stated distinctly that he believed the University to be not only able, but distinctly bound, to complete the education of those ladies whom it had invited to matriculate, and that all necessary arrangements for that purpose could legally be made. It will thus be seen that the above opinions at any rate neutralized each other, and that, had the University willed it otherwise, it certainly need not have been “paralyzed” by one of them. It is further stated that the University Court informed the ladies that, by the opinion above referred to, “it was debarred from promoting their graduation until the legality of such graduation could be established, but it offered to make, in the meantime, arrangements for their full medical instruction”; and, further, that such offer was rejected by the ladies. Both these statements, Sir, I distinctly deny. I have at this moment the whole correspondence before me, and I fail utterly to find in it any such offer as that alleged. The only thing that in any degree gives colour to Sir Alexander’s assertion is a passage occurring in a Minute of the University Court of January 8, 1872, which is as follows: “The Court are of opinion that the question under reference has been complicated by the introduction of the subject of graduation, which is not essential to the completion of a medical or other education.... If the applicants in the present case would be content to seek the examination of women by the University for certificates of proficiency in medicine, instead of University degrees, the Court believe that arrangements for accomplishing this object would fall within the scope of the powers given to them by section 12 of the Universities (Scotland) Act. The Court would be willing to consider any such arrangements which might be submitted to them.” On receiving a copy of this Minute I pointed out that certificates of proficiency, not being recognized by the Medical Act of 1858, would be quite useless to us; but added that, “As the main difficulty before your honourable Court seems to be that regarding graduation, with which we are not immediately concerned at this moment, we are quite willing to rest our claims to ultimate graduation on the facts as they stand up to the present date, and in case your honourable Court will now make arrangements whereby we can continue our education, we will undertake not to draw any arguments in favour of our right to graduation from such future arrangements, so that they may at least be made without prejudice to the present legal position of the University.” In answer to this letter I was informed that “If the names of extra-academical teachers of the required medical subjects be submitted by yourself or by the Senatus, the Court will be prepared to consider the respective fitness of the persons so named to be authorized to hold medical classes for women who have in this or former sessions been matriculated students of the University, and also the conditions and regulations under which such classes should be held.” I, of course, replied that we would willingly prepare and submit such a list (though your readers will notice that this simply amounted to all the arrangements being thrown upon us students, and not in any degree made by the Court), but requested first to be assured that, “though you at present give us no pledge respecting our ultimate graduation, it is your intention to consider the proposed extra-mural courses as ‘qualifying’ for graduation, if it is subsequently determined that the University has the power of granting degrees to women.” In reply I was informed that the Court would do nothing of the kind; that we might, if we pleased, take all the trouble and expense of finding teachers, and might “submit” their names to the Court, but that in no case would the Court take any measures for making their teaching of any practical use to us from a University point of view. Your readers will therefore judge of what value was the boon that we are alleged to have rejected—I had almost said the trap that we were fortunate enough to have escaped! I am sorry to have paused so long over this point, but the assertion of your correspondent was so amazing that it seemed essential that the real facts should be laid before the public. I should be only too glad if your space would allow you to publish the whole correspondence, of which I forward a copy for your own perusal. Should any of your readers desire, however, to ascertain more of the facts, they will find the correspondence fully given in the notes to a little book called Medical Women, published last year by Oliphant & Co., of Edinburgh, to which also I may refer for a detailed account of the whole struggle of the first three years at Edinburgh. I notice that Sir Alexander Grant thinks it well to omit the fact that, when we were at last driven to assert our rights in a court of law (and I may remark that no proposal for an “amicable suit” was ever made to me or to any of my fellow-students by the University authorities, and therefore none was ever “rejected” by us), an unhesitating decision in our favour was given by the Lord Ordinary, before whom the case was tried, his Lordship also finding the Senatus liable for three-fourths of our expenses. The University refused, however, to accept this verdict, and appealed the case to the Inner House, where they at length succeeded in obtaining a judgment in their favour from a bare majority of the Lords of Session, the whole costs being in this case thrown upon us. Perhaps you will kindly allow me, however, to quote the following passage from the judgment of the Lord Justice Clerk, who adhered to the decision of the Lord Ordinary, and who had himself been Rector of the University when we were admitted as students.[167] ... I may mention that an abstract of the whole recent lawsuit has been published as a sixpenny pamphlet, and may be obtained from Mr. Elliott, 67 Princes Street, Edinburgh. Apologizing for so large a trespass on your space, I remain, yours obediently, Sophia Jex-Blake. APPENDIX G
PERMANENT MEMORIALS OF SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE In St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh,—a brass tablet placed by the Very Rev. T. W. Jex-Blake: “Sacred to the Memory of Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D., by whose energy, courage, self-sacrifice and perseverance the Science of Medicine and the Art of Healing were opened to Women in Scotland.” In the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children, placed by the Committee and friends,—a medallion of cast bronze mounted on a slab of verde-antique marble: on the medallion, surrounded by a wreath of laurel, the family crest and motto: And below this the inscription: “In affectionate remembrance of Sophia Jex-Blake, Founder of this Hospital, to whose large courage, insight and constancy the admission of Women to the Profession of Medicine in this Country is mainly due.” On the family monument at Ovingdean, near Brighton: SOPHIA LOUISA, YOUNGEST CHILD OF THOMAS JEX-BLAKE, AND MARIA EMILY, HIS WIFE. DOCTOR OF MEDICINE, FOUNDER IN 1874 OF THE LONDON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOR WOMEN, AND IN 1888 OF A SIMILAR SCHOOL IN EDINBURGH, WHERE SHE ALSO FOUNDED A HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN 1886. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” In Rotherfield Churchyard, where her body was laid,—a grey granite cross, bearing the words: SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE, M.D. BORN 21ST JANUARY, 1840. DIED 7TH JANUARY 1912. “Then are they glad because they are at rest, and so He bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.”
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