VII. FRIENDSHIP
The great remain children to the last, and in this respect S. J.-B. was essentially one of the great. To the end of her life, for those who knew her well, she could be a delightful child. But it was about the time we are considering—the age of 20 to 21—that she may be said to have become a woman, or, more truly, to have put on her manhood. She was too busy at the time to describe or analyze in her diary the change that was taking place—“Oh,” she says, “the little space of time and paper! The mighty space of events ‘unheard’!”—she was in no way self-conscious about it; but there are indications, like straws on the surface of the water, that show in what direction the current was setting. One sees that she was beginning to look at life freshly and at first hand, that the old traditional dogmatism was falling away from her views of religion, of social questions, of the relation between the sexes. To be sure this old husk was being replaced by the even more acrid dogmatism of youth; but in that very acridity one feels the promise of growth, of the ripe wisdom of later years.
As far back as March 1859 one finds the following significant passage:
“Had a long argument with Miss Wodehouse today. Two points chiefly. 1. Are evil deeds, though always pernicious to the doer, sometimes beneficial to mankind? I affirming: she denying. 2. Is it our first duty to seek our own salvation? She denying.
I cannot tell why I am so unable to argue with her. She seems to get me into a maze. Yet I think she argues honestly. I sometimes shrink from ‘sacred’ subjects with her, yet she considers all equally sacred.
‘What is truth’ indeed? Yet am I not somewhat like ‘jesting Pilate’ who ‘would not stay for an answer’?”
“What is truth?” one finds her asking again and again, and she at least had one grand qualification for the search,—the habit of treating truth with respect even in its humblest fragments.
Her Father, of course, was uneasy about her.
“I should like to see you much,” he writes, “but I feel that Sunday would be a heavy day for you here (as I don’t frequent popish mass houses or the like), so that if you could run down here on Monday evening....”
And again:
“When I think of the (at best) half teaching you have, but that I confide in our gracious covenant head, I should tremble for you when I am gone. I have no doubt at all that Maurice is a most amiable man, but I believe that to this hour he has never come clear out of Unitarianism, and therefore does not see distinctly, nor, of course, teach scripturally, any one of those fundamental Christian truths (all connected together) original sin, Christ’s vicarious work atoning for sin and fulfiling the law, justification by faith, and salvation by grace. Read, darling, ...”
The following “passage of arms” with a Norfolk cousin, a man some years older than herself, is interesting in this connection:
“Hastings, March 12/60.
MY DEAR SOPHY,
I left Brighton on Friday with something of a heavy heart. I saw I had grieved you where I had really no intention of doing so: that was painful to me and I must regret it. I express to you my strong regrets. But oh! tenthousandfold deeper was the sad conviction forced upon me, that the advance you have made,—shall I vex you if I say honestly and openly,—Romewards, since I last saw you was very great. I believe you are as yet unconscious of your own tendency. I told you so at Lyng. But in honesty I must tell you, my dear Sophy, I tremble for you. It is such awfully slippery ground. It is such a pleasant accommodation of religion to our fallen nature. It so feeds our impulsiveness and fortifies our natural religionism.
Will you forgive me if, with a cousin’s, I hope more than that, anxious love I beseech you to ‘consider your ways,’ and bring your soul before God in this matter. Pray don’t starve your soul on gilded husks while bread lies at your feet in your Father’s house.
I know more than one amiable creature who began as you have done, and has landed in Rome....
Dear Sophy, don’t trust your head, much less your heart, much less any fallen man or imperfect church under the sun. Trust Jesus, Jesus only, Jesus wholly, Jesus exclusively.
I trust this note will not make you wrath against me.... Be sure of one thing, I banter no more, where feeling is evidently so deep. Henceforth I will try and pray fervently for your poor soul’s conversion to God.”
“March 14th./60.
MY DEAR ...
If I do not say that you have written me a most ridiculous letter, it will be more from respect to its motive than its matter,—or purport. I know people can work themselves up to any exaggerated view of things, yet I can hardly believe that, if you have half the sense people say you have, you can on sober reconsideration really believe that there was the smallest ground for your tirade in my objection to hear a Church—a house of God at least, spoken of and criticised as if it were a right thing to visit it as you would a theatre, and remain a looker-on while others were worshipping. ‘Seeking occasion against’ men was not the characteristic of the followers of the Jesus whose name you reiterate so often. I believe this was the whole feeling with which I spoke, exactly as I should have done if it had been a Baptist Meeting-house you were commenting on,—as I believe you would not have commented on a Baptist Meeting-house.
You may, if you please, take my word for it that I am not going over to Rome, among whose partisans, however, I must say that I have never— no, nor I think from any other denomination under the sun—heard the same virulent abuse of those who have at least ‘one Lord,’ if not ‘one faith and one baptism,’—that I have from the Puritan portion of our own Church: and I am sure no God and no Church was ever served by the one or the other....
What I have written is probably ill conceived and worse expressed. Excuse all such deficiencies. If I have myself fallen into the error I protest against, I need more than excuse—forgiveness. I have not meant to be violent or uncourteous, but where I have felt strongly, I doubt not I have so spoken.
For your cousinly care and affection I thank you heartily, as I am ever
Your affectionate cousin, S. L. J.-B.”
And not only in matters of thought and principle was she developing; she was beginning, too, to take her full share of responsibility as regards her fellow-creatures, entering into the meaning of brotherhood and citizenship. In addition to her work at Queen’s College, she undertook to teach bookkeeping gratuitously in connection with the Society for the Employment of Women, and had a class of children at Great Ormond Street. “I don’t know how I should like her,” said a candid critic, “but it is a pleasure to see anyone do anything so well as she does teach.”
Reference was made in a former chapter to her faculty for taking the side-issues of life too intensely. It may not be right to look on friendship as a side-issue—though many of the world’s workers are more or less forced so to regard it: in any case it is scarcely too much to say that—even when one takes into account the endless philanthropic interests and activities of her later years—friendship constituted for S. J.-B. the main work of life. If she had been paid for the sheer hard work she did simply as a friend, she would have been a very rich woman. She was always giving out, and from this time forward, she acted on the maxim, “Bis dat qui cito dat.” If she arrived home, dead-tired, to find a letter asking immediate advice or help, she would answer the letter then and there and carry her answer to the post. If a friend was passing through London, or coming to spend a few hours with her, she would piece out a laborious journey by bus between her classes to meet that friend at some far-off station and make things easy for her. If a fellow-student or a teacher seemed on the point of breaking down, S. J.- B. would write three or four letters and call on half-a-dozen people to arrange for a holiday, and, if necessary, for a substitute. “Then home very tired,” she writes to her Mother after such an experience, “but very content to write this account to you.” (As not infrequently happened, the invalid had found a refuge at 13 Sussex Square, and Mrs. Jex-Blake’s kind heart was set on an extension of the holiday.)
“I do not think I ever did so good a Lord’s Day work in my life,—if, that is, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath Day,—to save life, not to kill,—or let kill. I think I am very like a life-boat,—valueless in itself, yet useful enough in saving better things alive. That, indeed, its whole use and work.”
“I am sure all that driving and running about with me on Thursday made your eye and headache much worse,” writes Cousin Sarah, “but you are such a dear kind old pet,—would half kill yourself for anybody.”
A former school friend writes at the same date:
“I feel I ought not to trouble you, occupied as you are, but, whenever I have asked you for anything, your kindness and sympathy have been so readily given that I always think of you when I hear of any wants.”
“Mama sends her very best love,” writes Miss M. J. Evans, “and Papa too. Oddly enough, both like you. How can they?—such a trumpery heartless girl!”
And one comes upon hundreds of tributes to the same effect.
Sometimes S. J.-B.’s willing assistance was of a kind that involved no small labour and anxiety. If a friend was shy and gifted and poor, capable of producing work not yet recognized as marketable, S. J.-B. was always ready to be the middleman. She would write round to well-to-do friends enlisting their interest, do up samples of the work for inspection, and (most serious of all!) undertake the responsibility of receiving the samples safe back again. “Put the responsibility on me,” she used to say cheerily in after life, “my shoulders are broad enough”; and there is no doubt she began to say this—if not in so many words— before the age of 20. People got into the way of trusting her to see a thing through, of assuming that it was her métier to be competent and to organize, of leaving to her the heavy end of the stick: and no doubt she enjoyed it all and learned much from it, though, when taken in addition to her regular work, it was terribly hard on her hasty temper and “irritable brain.”
“You must be very thankful to be a medium of helping so many,” writes her Mother,—“a great honour, I consider it, pleasure without alloy.” But in the same letter she says, “Sad, sad weather for you to knock about in. Darling, don’t risk your health.”
“I would not and could not speak” (after parting from you), writes Ellie. “I wish I was not such a silly fool, but I could not help it and never can, if I have to leave you.... I wonder if you have wished for me, if it was only to scold and fight with; but what I wish most of all is that you would give up fighting. I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration.... I do with all my heart wish that you would try to keep in that temper of yours.”
Noble Ellie!—“Walks upright beside me, a companion, a guide, and gives me a hand.”
S. J.-B. rarely, if ever, expected her friends to do her the same kind of service; but, if they became very dear, she did demand—more or less unconsciously to herself—a definite quid pro quo. In her big masterful way she would proceed to absorb their lives into her own; to establish a subtle growing claim that was not easy to resist. She was splendidly loyal herself, and the loyalty she exacted in return, though at first glance an easier thing, involved more than she was in any degree aware of. As life went on people found it increasingly difficult to disagree with her: many simply ran away—se sauvaient, as the French say; and yet it was only when in the last resort one resisted her to the face for conscience sake in some matter very dear to her heart,—that one really gauged the greatness of her nature.
All this is taking us somewhat ahead of the early friendships at Queen’s, but the frank recognition of this aspect of her character is essential to an adequate understanding of her life even in those days. A Queen’s College friend who, in the most admirable and magnanimous spirit had accepted what might be reckoned a heavy obligation to S. J.-B. and her Father, writes as follows:
“I wish to tell you (I could not before, but think it right now) that this ... will be more of a personal advantage and enjoyment to me than anything else in the world....
With all my heart I rejoice to acknowledge an immense obligation to you for your love to me at all times and for this particular way of showing it, but not that sort of obligation which shall in any way affect my words and doings with you for the future.”
If friendships are to be weighed, not counted, S. J.-B. was, even at this period, fortunate in her possession of them. The Norfolk cousins, the Cordery family, Miss Wodehouse, Miss Ada Benson, Miss Lucy Walker (afterwards Mrs. Unwin) who was her junior at Queen’s, Miss Martha Heaton (Mrs. Hilhouse) a fellow teacher,—are the names that occur to one most readily. And at this time there came into her life a friendship that was destined to make a deeper impression on her than any of these,— the deepest impression, in fact, of any in the whole of her life.
This is how it began:
“Jan. 26th. 1860. Just had a lesson in book-keeping from Miss [Octavia] Hill. Clever, pleasant girl,—much nicer than I thought. Dined with me. What and how the deuce am I to pay her? £1 1s., I suppose. Dear old Patty Heaton! How fond I am of her, and what wonderfully good friends we are!”
“Jan. 27th. I am sure I am a good companion for her (Miss Heaton) if only in amusing her. I think laughing does her a deal of good—hearty fun. I rejoice in her exceedingly. And I hope for another sort of friend, or ally at least, in Miss Hill who came and taught me book- keeping yesterday evening. Nice, sensible, clever. Very good worker, I expect.”
In the published Life of Miss Octavia Hill, one cannot but observe how good this dawning friendship was for her also, how beneficient was the sunshine that it brought into her somewhat grey young life. On Feb. 5th, 1860, she writes to her sister:
“I am always thinking of you both, and longing to have you home again that you may really know all our doings and lives. Mine lately you would assuredly consider rather of the dissipated kind. I have been giving some book-keeping lessons to Miss J.-B. She is a bright, spirited, brave, generous young lady, living alone, in true bachelor style. It took me three nights to teach her, and she begged me to come to dinner each time. She has a friend who is killing herself by hard work to support her younger sisters. I gather she would gladly give her friend help, for she speaks most sadly of the ‘modern fallacy’ ‘that the money must be earned.’ She thinks it might be given when people are dear friends: she says they’ve given the most precious thing and what difference can a little money make?”[16]
Footnote 16:
Life of Octavia Hill.
Almost from the first Miss Hill’s letters to S. J.-B. took a serious tone. On March 18th she writes:
“I wonder whether you will think me very impertinent if I say that I wonder you don’t see that, in turning away from so many important thoughts with a half joke, you are refusing God’s means of grace as much as in staying away from ordained services. It is no good my writing sermons, however.... I trust to live to see some one or some sorrow do for you what I cannot, to see such a peace as ‘passeth all understanding’ come over you, to see the thankful, perfect dedication of all your powers to His service for His sake....
I too long for a nice quiet talk with you. I enjoy it so, and your magnificent energy does me such good.”
The talks were not always quiet. There are those still living who remember some animated discussions, for the two girls had stepped, as it were, out of totally different worlds. Here is a typical passage:
S. J.-B. (hotly), “I never heard the game laws attacked!”
O. H. (calmly), “I never heard them defended!”
In the Easter holidays of that year both Miss Heaton and Miss Hill were guests at 13 Sussex Square, and the friendship between the latter and S. J.-B. was greatly deepened.
“My dear loving strong child,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary after this visit. “I do love and reverence her.... Had a loving solemn letter (not altogether pleasing to me) on my telling her we had had a ‘row’ [at home]. Told her by return ‘Hang you,’ and bade her remember she was neither nurse nor parson.
Dear, dear child, though. Mother calls it beautiful letter.”
It was so characteristic of S. J.-B. to show that letter to her Mother!
On April 29th Miss Octavia Hill writes again to her sister:
“You dear old thing, I wish I had you here to give you a good rest and rousing, and refreshing. I am as merry as a grig.... Miss J.-B. and I are always doing things together—great companions I am with her. You know she’s teaching me Euclid. We went to see Holman Hunt’s picture,...”[17]
Footnote 17:
Life of Octavia Hill.
And again we quote from S. J.-B.’s diary:
“May 17th, Whitsunday. A most delicious day at Hurst with Ruth[18] and Octa. Went down together second-class by 6 train.... Told Octa about Wales,—sitting in her room on the table, my heart beating like a hammer. That Carry wanted to go to Wales and I too, and most convenient about beginning of July, so ... ‘Put off my visit?’ said Octa. ‘No, I was going to say (slowly) if you wish to see anything of me, you must come too, I think, and not put off the mountains till heaven.’ She sunk her head on my lap silently, raised it in tears, and then such a kiss!”
Footnote 18:
Miss Heaton.
There is a happy letter about this Welsh tour:
“Bettws-Y-Coed, July 26th/60.
DARLING MOTHER,
We have decided rather in a hurry as there are to be no prizes, ... to give a treat to all, which, however, Mr. Jones specially stipulates is not to be a school treat.... It is just coming off today. I ordered 60 lbs. of dough and etcs. from Catherine Owen,— rather less rich than last year (that is, fewer eggs and less butter). It makes 88 lbs. altogether. But it was only settled on Monday, and as this is Thursday I am half afraid all may not know. But we have tried hard to send scouts everywhere....
Please tell me as early as possible where you will be each day of the week beginning Sunday, August the 12th. Now don’t let Tom just prevent your remembering or caring[19] to meet your little one. I do long to see you so....
Footnote 19:
By the charm of his personality, she means, of course; not by design.
Weymouth St. July 30th. All over, darling, now, and such a happy time without a single blot I never remember in my life. Every thing has been better than any anticipation of it. We have done everything we wanted to do. We have been everywhere and have had no mischance, no annoyance of any kind. Octa looks five years younger, and as bright as a sunbeam. And I am in so thoroughly happy a state of mind as hardly to know myself. I really almost think I should be good-tempered now. We came home by Llangollen on Saturday, 40 miles coach and 194 miles rail. Not a bad journey for one day. We went up that morning to your high mound. The view was glorious. I took poor old Ellen Jones some squills for her cough, but she looks very ill indeed. She sent so very much love to you, and wished she had something to send you.
The treat came off excellently on Thursday. It was grand fun to see Octa playing with the children. At Hunt the Slipper once, she, pretending she had the shoe, held up her boot toe, saying, ‘See, here it is,’ or something like it. Grace Owen, who was seeking, seized hold of it as quick as light, crying ‘Let me have it then,’ pulled away, and capsized Octa entirely amid roars of laughing. Octa sprang up and chased her round and round the field till she caught and tickled her. It was quite one of the bits of fun of the evening.... The only contretemps was that poor little Hannah fell down and sprained her arm. However, Miss Hill’s surgical powers came in grandly, and I do not suppose Hannah is any the worse except for a few days inaction. Well, how strange it is to find this all over, and probably never to return. I cannot say I am glad our tour is over, for I do believe I was never so happy for so long in my whole life, but neither can I say I am sorry to see dear old London again,—I am sure I could come back to no other place—as a place—with near so much pleasure....
Just fancy Octavia’s energy,—after that tremendous journey not reaching home till 10.30, she was off to Lincoln’s Inn at 7 a.m. the next morning for the early communion, and went again, and I with her in the afternoon. Her Mother and sister were so delighted with her account of all her doings, and a glorious one she gave certainly. I had tea with them last night. Goodbye, my darling, for the present. Not so very long now, I trust, before we meet.
Aug. 1st. Although this has been in a ‘Milan’ envelope all this time, I suppose I must now send it to Chamounix, as I foolishly forgot to post it yesterday.
Today quite forgotten to order any dinner, so just bought some cheese and strawberries.
Tell Carry John Davis has sent her a letter to complain of me, which was forwarded to me, and which I have answered. Goodbye darling.
Yours lovingly, SOPH.”
In August, when S. J.-B. and Miss Heaton were abroad together, Miss Hill writes:
“London feels strangely desolate, the lamps looked as they used to look, pitiless and unending as I walked home last night, and knew I could not go to you.... I don’t the least suppose you’ll go to Florence or see my sisters, but, if you should, pray take off your ‘spikes’ and remember ... how much they love England, and everyone who is a friend of ours. I look forward to bright long days in which I shall learn always more about you, and watch with unending and unfathomable love and sympathy your upward growth, and we may look back together on our lives, as I do often on my own, and wonder how I could know and see so little, and wonder more how, knowing so little, I should be led continually to deeper truth.”
Here, one would have said, was the beginning of an ideal friendship, and so it might have proved—allowing, of course, for the necessary rubs between two such strong natures—had the two girls been alone in the world. But each of the two belonged to a family that in different ways exacted a great deal from each of its members, and particularly of the member involved in the present friendship. It is doubtful whether even the two girls could have made a success of living together, for the diary refers occasionally to “cataracts and breaks,” and on both sides there are letters of penitence for hot temper or “coldness and pride.” Moreover, Miss Hill loved peace more than do most, and, dearly as she loved S. J.-B., she was almost bound in time to find her “more stimulating than quotidian,” to quote a quaint phrase of Carlyle’s.
It is therefore with no small sinking of heart that one reads the following entry in S. J.-B.’s diary:
“Sept. 9th. Sunday [1860]. A plan on foot of my taking part of a house with the Hills and having Alice for a servant. That would be very jolly. But rents high about here,—least £120.”
Certainly a similar sinking of heart took possession of Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake, and when they learned that the finding of a tenant for the drawing-room floor was an essential part of the scheme, it is not surprising that—short of stopping their daughter’s allowance which had been increased some time before—they did everything in their power to discourage the arrangement. They were well aware that, here as everywhere, the willing shoulders would take their full share of work and responsibility. The reader will be prepared for Mr. Jex-Blake’s point of view:
“DEAREST CHILD,
You cannot surely mean to take a house and let lodgings in direct opposition to your dear Mother and me. It would be quite disgraceful and we never can consent to it. I will not believe, my dear child, with all our love for you, that you will so directly disobey us, or that Miss Hill, knowing our feelings on the subject, can be a party to it.
When you spoke of the other house, you said a lawyer was to look over the lease, and take care of the Hills, and I firmly believed, till the last few days, that you were to hire rooms. I had no more idea of your becoming a lodging-house keeper than of your keeping a shop. You cannot suppose that I would assist Miss Hill in such an exceedingly blameable transaction. I would with real pleasure assist her in all possible ways ... but no Father or Mother who love their daughter, in your position, could consent to her joining in it. I trust, dearest child, you will give up all idea of such a thing, which, once done, you would repent as long as you lived.”
The response to this protest has not been preserved. On October 18th Miss Hill writes:
“MY DARLING CHILD,
Thanks for all the trouble that you are taking about the houses, I am quite ashamed it should all fall to your share. Is Harley Street house quite out of the question? I received a letter from Mama, earnestly desiring that we should keep near the park; she would not at all like Bentinck Street. Don’t weary yourself with searching. I certainly will return on Thursday (probably much before) then we will look together again.... If it would secure the Harley Street house by all means let us pay all the taxes whatever they may be. I am writing in the dark. Goodbye, my own darling treasure.
I am, Yours affectionately, OCTAVIA HILL.
Mama has an affection now for Harley Street.”
Finally, the house 14 Nottingham Place was taken, and rather more than the customary number of difficulties had to be worked through in connection with it. In addition to this, illness broke out in the house, and there were several invalids to be nursed.
The most forgiving of mothers writes after a visit to her daughter:
“It is all your own choice and doubtless right, but it sometimes grieves me to think how many discomforts you have, and how many indulgences I have—only it is not my doing that you have them not. I wish I did not think of you as worn and fagged. Do assure me that you go to bed as early as you can and get good rest.”
Fortunately youth and friendship make all things easy, or at least bearable. During S. J.-B.’s brief absence in December Miss Hill writes:
“Oh, child, your letters are such a delight, but I miss you so dreadfully. I wander like a lost thing about the house and long for you intensely. Every place seems so desolate. Every witness of your thought and active care of and for me contrasted vividly with Z’s odd procrastination till I almost felt unjust and unkind. And yet I ought to glory in your kindness and goodness, and in all that mighty and glorious energy that will help so many people in this sad world, if it is spared to us. Your room, the fire, the thought of all you had told me to provide for myself, fills my eyes with tears. I mean to spend a very quiet and happy Sunday.” And again, later,—“Do you know I get on very much more easily with strangers than I used, all of which I owe to you. It is a great satisfaction to me: it pleases one’s friends to have their friends like one.”
Up to this point the friendship had been an almost unqualified gain, but, little by little, Miss Hill began to feel the strain of dividing herself—so to speak—between her family, her comrade and her work. In May 1861 she was called away by the illness of her friend, Miss Harris,[20] and the change to an ideally peaceful life was just what she needed. Her own health had begun to suffer and she remained on at the Lakes for some months to gain strength. In her absence, S. J.-B. took on her own shoulders in great measure the responsibilities of householder. Hitherto her acquaintance with the other members of the Hill family had been slight, but a warm friendship now sprang up between her and the sister, Miranda, who often shared the meals made ready by the devoted Alice and served by her in her young mistress’ room. Few young people in the first glow of a new friendship have sufficient tact, self-control and knowledge of life to avoid all risk of wounding their elders, and such tact would scarcely be possible in a nature like S. J.-B.’s. Little rubs and frictions increased, and no doubt Octavia was the confidante of all. In July she writes:
Footnote 20:
Life of Octavia Hill.
“I hold myself prepared to come when it seems right, sure to be given strength to do my duty, but certainly not longing for anything that will bring me again into a world of contention. I can’t bear to think how pained you would be if you could know the strength of this feeling, for I know you would feel it a failure of love. I tell you all this because I am sure you will feel it in my letters, because I am sure such a cloud hurts less when frankly confessed, because I am sure such a friendship as yours and mine need not fear it, remaining untouched and immoveable, based on what can neither change nor know fear.... All my life long this dread and misery about even the slightest contention or estrangement has taken the form of misery, continually saying in itself, ‘I can_not_ bear it.’ Since physical strength has left me so far this wretched dread has increased tenfold....
How delightfully kind and good you are to everybody. I can fancy I see you, brightly kind, good and energetic, going about among all the people, entertaining monitors, inviting my sisters to tea, giving club dinners, learning about examinations, arranging the play, talking to Miss Boucherett, delighting to plan work and holiday for them all.... When I have thought, as I often have, that it is probable that I may never have strength to work any more, you cannot think how I have clung to the thought of your ever ready and powerful help and care.”
Through all this tide of affection, one wonders whether S. J.-B. in any way realized the very genuine apprehension her friend felt about returning to the atmosphere of contention. The probability is that she did not realize it at all, or rather that she looked upon it as the expression of a transient mood caused by physical weakness. No doubt she made a generous resolve that “everything should be made easy for Octa” when she returned; but she did not realize how great was the need for resolve. She never saw her own personality from the outside; and of course hers was not the only “temperament” in the house. No member of the family could have been described as a mere cabbage.
We all know how friction increases when the machinery is out of gear: differences of opinion grew: Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake protested against the imprudence of accepting a banker’s reference only, in the case of a foreigner who was in terms for the rooms, and for once their daughter upheld their view with tenacity. Finally,—though this not till October— the state of strain became so great that Octavia was summoned home.
One can sympathize profoundly with her in the difficult situation she was called upon to face. She knew by this time what the faults were on both sides, knew in particular that S. J.-B. was not a placid person; began to guess perhaps that explosions of temper were as essential to that generous nature as the thunderstorm is to a stretch of summer days. Meanwhile everyone was counting on her to solve the difficulty with a wave of her wand: and here was she, never very robust, weary with a long journey, called away from a congenial holiday to the intimate association with a thousand and one petty cares in addition to the special crisis that had summoned her home.
The extracts given above are a mere gleaning from many unpublished letters which bear witness to her devoted attachment to S. J.-B., but although her sympathy with her own mother was perhaps less fervent at this time than it afterwards became—she had a strong sense of filial affection and duty. Moreover she had her work in the world to do— invaluable work we know it proved—and she felt that she could only do it in an atmosphere of peace and quiet.
Assuredly it was not an easy situation to face. Looking back upon the whole story after more than half-a-century, one cannot but wish that she had simply compelled S. J.-B. to realize the truth,—that she found herself unable to live and do her work unless she could have the peace that her soul loved, that—much as she had profited up to a certain point by the stimulating friendship of one so unlike herself—the time had come when she found that friendship too stimulating under present conditions. Surely—one fancies—some arrangement might have been arrived at by which so mutually beneficial a friendship might have been continued.
Miss Hill, however, decided otherwise. In the watches of that first night, after a long talk with her Mother (a talk that, in the nature of the case, can scarcely have emphasized S. J.-B.’s point of view), before she had even seen her friend, she resolved to forego even the semblance of an attempt to reconcile these conflicting claims. Something must go, and that something must not be the mother and sisters to whom she had devoted most of her ardent young life, the mother and sisters who depended on her wisdom and goodness more even than they knew.
It was one thing to make the great resolve: it was quite another to explain it to the friend whose one conscious desire was to make Octa’s life an easy one.
So she set her face like a flint, and, for the first time in the course of their friendship, she refused to see S. J.-B.’s side of the question at all. Peace must be secured at all costs, and, if peace was to be secured, this delightful exacting friendship must end. S. J.-B. might retain her rooms for the time as a matter of business—
But neither S. J.-B. nor her indignant Mother would listen to that.
Well, then, let it all go. The time for half measures—or so Miss Hill thought—was over. All intercourse must cease. “The relentless knife must cut sheer through.”
How much the effort cost her we gather from the extent to which she overdid the part. She was at the end of her tether, so to speak, and acting, doubtless, on an instinct of sheer self-preservation, she would allow no discussion of any kind. She set her face so flintily that S. J.-B. was driven in uttermost bewilderment to the conclusion that the complete withdrawal was due to some extraordinary aberration on the part of her friend—an aberration for which so noble a being could not be responsible, and which might therefore come to an end as suddenly as it had begun. A thousand times she had said to herself, “Everything will be right when Octavia comes!” And now, behold, Octavia was here, and it was no Octavia. It was a fairy changeling to whom the beautiful past was a thing unknown. The rupture was so complete that it was no rupture. It was a nightmare, an inexplicable darkness at noonday, something so contrary to all known laws of nature that it could not last. This hope, this attitude of expectancy, was encouraged by the extraordinarily tender and appreciative letters which, at intervals for some years, broke through Miss Hill’s reserve. In one of these letters, dated Nov. 5th, she writes:
“Oh, Sophy, how splendidly you and your Mother did act those last days that now seem so far away.... When I see how deep your forethought was, so loving as to have remembered the very slightest things that might be the least trouble to us when you were no longer near to take care of us, one feels as if an angel had (may I not say still is taking) care of us.”
A generous letter indeed, but in the face of such letters was it any wonder that S. J.-B. failed as of old to grasp the extent of the difficulty,—that she refused to accept the situation as final,—that she lived on in hope, and often all but intolerable suspense? “Did I want to learn constancy?” she says.
If the lesson was needed, most assuredly it was learned. Till the close of her life the friendship on her side remained unbroken, although she ceased in time to speak of it even to her most intimate friends; in repeated wills she left the whole of her little property to Miss Hill,[21] and, although other friends came in time to fill the empty place—although she even wrote playfully in her diary some twenty years later of her “fanciful faithfulness”—until the eve of her last illness she would not extinguish the hope that “even in this life” the friendship might be renewed.
Footnote 21:
Until circumstances rendered Miss Hill independent of such aid.
One might say more than this. From the time of the rupture, Octavia Hill became to S. J.-B. a pure ideal—something of what the subject of the In Memoriam was to the author of that wonderful threnody.
In any case the whole history of the friendship was destined to lie on higher levels because Octavia Hill had felt bound to break it off.
VIII. A STEP BEYOND
It has never been customary among students of human nature to attach great importance to the outpourings of a romantic friendship, save in the rare cases where these have achieved consummate literary form. The religion of the adolescent, too, is a thing that we are apt to take a good deal for granted. In S. J.-B.’s case, however, the ideal—the vision—to which this brief friendship gave rise throws a light on potentialities of feeling and expression which we should otherwise never have had. The fact that so apparently transient a gleam should have given rise to a great and lasting inspiration lifts the passages that follow quite out of the category of the great mass of similar experiences.
The effect of one personality upon another is a thing we can never predict and seldom explain. It is not a mere question of addition or even of multiplication. The process is a vital one which can never be mechanically reckoned out. We all see over and over again in life how the receiver may contribute as much as the giver—the pupil no less than the teacher. When the word of God went forth from Sinai, we are told, each man heard it in the tongue in which he was born.
In any case that strange and new experience came with the force of a ferment to S. J.-B. “She was never the same again,” says a lifelong friend, looking back on the whole history after more than fifty years: “it cut her life in two.” But the cutting in two—like the division of the primordial cell—was the earnest, not of death, but of life on a larger scale.
“My Mother’s full glorious sympathy! What could I do without that? God bless her, my darling,—mine for ever.”
So writes S. J.-B. in the first days of her trial. If anyone knew the meaning of the words, “as one whom his mother comforteth,” it was she.
And never did she need that comfort more than now. She left the house in Nottingham Place at once, but she gallantly finished her term at Queen’s College and then went home to Brighton. “I must not get bitter and cynical,” she says. “I don’t think I shall. And yet the crash has been awful.”
As often before in lesser troubles she was thrown back on her own deep religious faith.
“Bankrupt?” she asks herself. “No, by God’s grace, no! No personal trouble, no trouble of any kind, can wreck a life in His charge. Still His,—that the strong, the enduring thought.
From this very threshold of pain, whatever be its present issue, shall go forth an earnest patient life,—to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant to my life’s end.
Yes, I,—Christ’s soldier! Yes, earnestly, heartily, entirely, though speculatively this Christ I know not,—though my mind asks in all uncertainty What and Who?...
Dogmas are one thing; life is another.
Doing is clear; ‘doing the will,’—‘knowing the doctrine’ shall come later. Not believing though. I mean understanding,—receiving with reason and mind.”
So she prepared her altar, “and put no fire under,” but the flash came.
“Dec. 13th. Sunday. 11.45 p.m. Who could have believed what a happy holy evening has succeeded to all the pain, storm and whirlwind of the morning?
Dr. Smith’s death.[22] The loss of Octavia’s day,—her visit of one hour; the utter stupor of misery. Then, with all the pain, the perfect feeling of content and assurance of Rightness in things. Then this happy evening, lifting me altogether out of myself and my pain into the trials and struggles and efforts and interests of Lucy and Emily,— and, thank God, the power of helping both. Now this calm perfect peace, which sends me to bed ‘resting.’... Oh, God is most merciful, most bountiful. ‘Like as a Father pitieth his children’.”
Footnote 22:
Dr. Southwood Smith, Miss Hill’s grandfather.
“12 p.m. Sunday night.
Don’t chide me for writing late, Mother. I must speak to you. If I could give you an idea of the peaceful, happy evening I have had,— sending me to bed with a heart full of love and joy and thankfulness. No, nothing has changed in outer things. I have no other news. But perfect peace has come. I can hardly tell you how happy I am, Mother.
I have had such a happy, holy evening with two or three of the girls.... And God seemed to give me such wonderful power to help them, and I believe He has helped them. And in all this—I know not how, but I wake up at their departing ... to find that somehow God has rolled away my burden utterly.
I had forgotten it and myself altogether, and now I can find neither. I can hardly believe in the pain and misery of the morning, it seems a dim, far-off memory.
Is it not wonderful, Mother? Goodnight, my own darling.
Yours very very lovingly, SOPHY.
I do not know when I could so fully and entirely say, ‘I will lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety.’”
Follows an undated fragment, probably written to her Mother next morning:
“—passed other quiet wayfarers, just as heavily weighted. How gentle it ought to make one,—to see how utterly ignorant one may be of sorrow at one’s elbow,—how one can only be generally tender to people, if one would escape striking down an already tottering neighbour because one does not and cannot know his needs.
It is only God who sees which is the bruised reed, and cherishes that specially,—or can do so.
I am thinking how near 4 o’clock is coming. It may bring me a kiss and a word from my darling. I am sure tonight’s post will at any rate.
Well, dear, I have you always and forever, and with you only I could never be desolate. And I have her too,—though she doesn’t know it now.
Yours very very lovingly, SOPH.”
“4.30 p.m. Thanks, many, darling, for your loving little note. You will know before this that the cloud is not dispersing in the way you mean,—that it has only more fully and certainly overspread the sky. Yet there is—and will be more and more, please God,—a light in it too.”
“Dec. 16th 1861. 8.30 p.m.
MY OWN DARLING MOTHER,
Thanks so many for the loving little scrap of letter which I knew would come to comfort me.
The sympathy is always delicious, but the active need for it is utterly gone. You will have got my last night’s letter, so Mother will not go to bed with a sad heart for her baby.
Yesterday I was wondering how it should be possible that I should ever live out the next three days till I got home to you. Now every sort of trouble seems to have fled utterly away. I never knew before the meaning of the words, ‘the peace that passeth understanding’....
I every now and then wake up with a kind of start of wonder to find such a sunny smile of heart gladness all over my face. And people see it too. It would be very odd if they didn’t when the whole world is changed to me. It is the most wonderful separation of the inner from the outer world that I ever knew. I suppose nothing is changed in the physical world, but everything seems for me bright and golden,—as in my Welsh tour with Octavia (I can speak of it and her now with perfect quiet peace), as in those days at Hurst.
Last night I thought it most glorious, but too delicious to last; but it seems now the atmosphere of life, as if nothing can touch or shake it....
Mother, a grand solemn wonder comes with it all, whether it is that when we have actually and literally given up every will and wish to God,—have rested utterly and entirely on Him with perfect trust— whether then pain loses its power, and only blessing, even now, can come.
... if so, what a glorious future one sees for all the sorrowful here,—for all the tried and suffering. ‘For all the wanderers the home is one’. The pain only till it has brought the bliss; the All- loving Father that cannot wound but to heal.
Now my spirit is so perfectly at rest, all my strength seems to have come back to me like Samson. I feel as if Edinbro’ or anything else was nothing to me. ‘He hath set my heart at liberty’,—that is the very truth. Mother, how naturally in every depth of sorrow or joy one turns to those words about which verbally we quarrel,—not really or deeply, Mother.
Goodnight, my own Darling, Yours very lovingly, SOPH.”
From diary:
“Dec. 16th Monday. ‘For as soon as ever thou hast delivered thyself to God with thy whole heart, and seekest not this or that for thine own pleasure or will, but fixest thyself wholly upon Him, thou shalt find thyself united and at peace.’
THOMAS A KEMPIS.”
“Dec. 22nd. Sunday, 11 p.m. The last thread actually broken,—the parting over.
Left London on Thursday evening by the 8 p.m....
Well, it is all in hands that cannot err,—speculative sceptic as I may be, practically my trust is as firm as the rock on which it rests. My Father doth do all things well,—and even makes me feel it,—even now. And surely, to take a lower ground, I have been an inapt pupil if the lessons of the last few months have not taught me the utter impossibility of calculating the possibilities of the future.
Should I have believed from man or angel on Tuesday the first the events of Thursday the last of October?
But we don’t want low ground. He is the rock,—His work is perfect.
And He will care for my child.”
Of course this mood of exaltation could not go on unbroken, except at the cost of sanity itself. Hours of reaction had to come. “We might have done anything together, we two!”
“Dec. 29th Sunday. Tonight the bitterness seemed doubled in finding ‘my teachers removed out of my sight.’ I just feeling my way to truth,—saved by her from so much doubt and possible infidelity. Well, God will teach me, will He not, Himself,—so Mother said. I cannot (or feel as if I could not: cannot is not a word for ‘Christ’s soldier and servant’, is it?) put it all away. I seem so physically weak and rotten, so unable to exert will and force myself to be quiet.
But I have found something to do. I behave infamously to the dear old man. Well! I mean to throw my whole being into being a good child at home. I won’t be rude and bad to him!
Now record this vow for a week,—don’t be superstitious, Jack; say ‘God helping me’ and go on,—forget yourself. Just do this piece of work,— and wait.
So be it.
What was the ‘chief evil’ to which the suffering must be directed to be sufficient?
‘Selfishness,’ said I.
Truly, Jack. And what is it but intolerable selfishness,—this brooding over a ‘bootless bene’,—this expecting sympathy and all sorts of kindness and excuse from my Mother and the rest, and talking about nerves and fiddle-de-dees,—instead of forgetting myself and seeing to my work and to other people.
Well, God helping me, now for a new leaf—of strength and resolve instead of whining self-pity.”
It was with this inspiration that she wrote to one of her pupils:
“Dec. 31st. 1861.
DEAR LUCY,
... My Modern History was all right, thank you,—I forgot you had it. By the bye, your handwriting seems to me to have ‘suffered an improvement’—I must congratulate you.
I am very glad you think I have helped you, dear child,—my life has been a very pleasant one in London,—its memory will be pleasanter still if it has been too not quite useless to some of the people who have helped to make it so. I could not easily count the people who have helped me,—some directly,—some merely ‘by living.’ It is a glorious thing, is it not, to be a link in that chain of help which encircles the world,—to pass on to another what one has given us,— feeling how all our broken bits of help and gift are gathered up in the perfection of the Great Giver and ‘Father of Lights.’
I do heartily hope that you will go back to Queen’s just to take and hold your place in that chain. Only do quite resolutely take your part for the highest and noblest,—remember ‘the soldier and servant’, and remember how very far we are from helping when we acquiesce in any wrong doing,—in any low standard of right and wrong, even by silence.
I do not think it would be easy to over-estimate the importance of a high pure tone among the leading girls at such a place as Queen’s,— perhaps such as you and L. hardly know what a power lies in your hands, for the very life of the College,—and mayn’t we look higher than that, and say for our Master’s work?
And after all that is the true and simple way of looking at it,—for consequences we can’t calculate,—but we always can know right from wrong, and the rest is not our affair.
Well, dear child, God bless and guide you,—that is the true help.”
And, finally, she writes in her diary:
“Dec. 31st. 1861. The last day of the year! Now to ‘take stock’. I have just finished, and balanced exactly my money matters (within a deficit of 2s. 8d. with which I left London). Now for the moral and historical. See the last volume for the beginning of the year. How well I remember the last day last year. Does she? How we did and sorted accounts till the chimes,—and then leant together out of the window in our new house fresh with plans and hopes, saying so hopefully,
‘And may the New Year cherish All the hopes that now are bright.’
And now truly almost,
‘For all my earthly hopes this (year) did kill.’
It is almost dreadful to look back and see how this book opens with a jest. How full of joke and spirit all seems! The ‘deep waters’ have come this year as never before. But it is a strange wild comfort to find in myself so much capacity for suffering. I had always despised myself as a weak shallow nature, to leave others to suffer and escape with a laugh....
(Wrote one last letter to Frid[23] tonight—for her birthday tomorrow. Weak? I think not.)
Well, now to ‘take stock’:
The opening of the year, bright, clear, hopeful. Octavia’s visit to the north, but that no real break. Our delight in our new house,—its quiet and peace. Some disappointment is not letting, but that very endurable. No bar to happiness....
Then the return of Frid and Florence. My unwilling acquaintance ripening gradually into love for Frid, called forth perhaps first by her great love for me.
Then our glorious Whitsuntide at Hurst,—Octa and I. The few days (Thursday to Tuesday) pure unmixed heart sunshine. Purer and deeper if possible than that of Wales.
Then the strange double summons on May 21st., she to Mary Harris, I to the O’Briens. Coming like a thunderbolt on our week, but accepted by both obediently and willingly. Together to London. Then my mission to Tufnell Park. The hurried tea, the night mail, the parting hand pressure as the train moved, ‘in the sure and certain hope’—is it blasphemous so to use the words? I think not. There was a glorious churchlike solemnity always on our love. Well!—then the five months’ parting,—hard it seemed then, but painless—heaven—to what came after.
Perhaps I am not yet meant to see the ‘why’ of all that followed.... We seemed so helpful heavenwards to each other. Never seemed our love truer, deeper, purer,—I know though now that mine could be all three.
Yet with all this wondering, I do and have felt most solemnly. Surely it is best. ‘We shall see in Heaven why it could not be otherwise.’
At least, Octavia, you have never had (in me at least) so true and deep and leal a friend as now,—and yet quieter and so stronger.
And for her—God have her in His holy keeping!
I feel some work has been done when I can say as deeply, truly as now that no earthly blessing could seem to me (except relating to my Mother) comparable to her restoration to me (for every feeling of hurt or wound or injury seems merged in deep earnest love ‘beyond words’) yet I am ready, and God helping me able to go through the world— darkened and lightless as it seemed a few weeks ago—and feel it yet my Father’s own world, ‘very good’ yet: ready in it manfully and cheerfully to take up my burden, and again and forever as ‘Christ’s faithful soldier and servant’ to fight manfully till my life’s end—so help me God!”
Footnote 23:
Miss Miranda Hill.
IX. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF EDINBURGH
It is the great miracle of life—that first glow and uplifting of the soul in touch with the Unseen. “The immediate consciousness of the religious man,” said Hegel, “has in it an infinite worth, because an infinite content.” For the moment it seems as if all the difficulties of life were swept away, as if nothing temporal could matter any more. But if the world at large is to be ennobled and spiritualised by these individual experiences, the inspiration has got to be worked out in “the commonplace clay with which the world provides us.”
And here comes in an all-important point, to which, on the whole, far too little significance has been attached. To some of those who have the vision, Fate gives a tractable, malleable lump of clay, limited in mass, fine in texture, ready to respond to the lightest touch of the potter: and so we get sweet and saintly characters whose lives will bear the minutest inspection—such characters as Maurice and Eugénie de Guérin, or the wonderful family described in Le Récit d’une Soeur. But there are some to whose lot a very different problem falls. The big and rough jobs of the world-spirit have to be tackled somehow. There are unwieldy masses of clay, full of grit and impurities, masses that do not seem to respond to the creative impulse at all. Rough handling, bold tunnelling may be required; and if it be true,—as it is—that the first beauty of the spiritual vision seems degraded in any attempt at realization, how much more is this the case when the seer is baffled and thwarted at every turn by the sheer inertness and stupidity of the lump, so to speak, when he is forced to resort to almost brutal methods in order to get his idea expressed at all.
God gives man the vision and the lump of clay; and many a man who escapes the censure of his fellows gives back the two separately to God, like the talent wrapped in a napkin: some men are privileged to return a piece of work that all eyes can value in a trice: and some, “with aching hands and bleeding feet” have merely blocked out a great conception, have half-unconsciously drafted the rough outline of one of the Almighty’s big schemes, an outline on the details of which smaller souls will be abundantly occupied for generations to come.
Before we judge of the finish of a man’s life, before we judge of its correspondence with what he believes to be his inspiration, let us ask— What was the extent of the problem it had to grapple with?—What was the mass and what the condition of the clay?—What, in a word, was the man’s task?
There must, of course, be some sort of affinity, some mesmeric attraction,—even if this should seem to show itself in an actual distaste—between the man and the task. So far as human stupidity makes this possible, we must believe that God Almighty chooses His man, and the work of the Almighty would be singularly limited in range if He chose for His purpose only those whose natural endowments are such as to make them an unqualified credit to any cause they may espouse.
All this must be specially borne in mind in judging the subsequent life of S. J.-B. We are bound, of course, to ask how she worked out in life this beautiful vision of her adolescence—bound to ask how she realized in practice the “infinite (potential) worth and content” of that first radiant consciousness; but before we attempt to answer the question, we must take into full account the extent and the difficulty of the task that fell to her share, and we must give full weight to the natural attributes which were the tools placed at her disposal.
It is clear that there was about her a doggedness, a high-handedness, a disregard of tradition, an actual—if superficial—roughness, which are not common qualities among the highly-educated of either sex, and which were never admired in her own. On the other hand, the reader of the foregoing pages will no longer need to be told of her tenderness and sensitiveness—of a capacity for loving and for suffering only commensurate with her power of inspiring love, of incurring suffering. In a sense she was a born fighter, but it is a very nice question how far she enjoyed a fight. Thousands of times throughout life she might truly have repeated the extract from her diary quoted on p. 46:
“This brought down an awful storm of wonder, reasoning, etc., till at length I got off to bed so tired.”
The diary continues after the extract quoted in the last chapter:
“And now to turn to the outer facts of life.
Here I am, my London College life over, with all its pleasures, all its cares, all its responsibilities, all its glorious delight at times.
Ten terms have I kept,—ten passed since the beginning of that second volume of mine! How sorrowfully meagre seems the record. Yet ‘the world could scarcely contain’ what might have been written.
My rooms in Nottingham Place given up (first and second floors let to Vs.). The world before me. Alice only bound to me. My life in Scotland to begin whenever rested. Wants sufficient resolution to make that ‘when.’ Yet I expect very needful.
I suppose the shock to my whole being of the last three months could not be easily reckoned. Two months today since I left N.P.!
Again the burden has been lightened since my resolve (how inadequately worked out!) of Sunday night. Not only Watch, but Work and wait!...
By-the-bye, Frid’s lovely Christmas gift,—Christ on the Cross. The Child Christ and verses (her’s?)
‘The love that brings salvation Shall at last prevail!’
Amen.”
“My life in Scotland to begin whenever rested.”
It is not easy to say what induced S. J.-B. to seek farther education in Scotland, except that she was anxious to extend her experience in every possible way. A few years later, thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Crudelius, Professor Masson, Miss Louisa Stevenson, and others, the University Classes for Women at Shandwick Place were successfully started, but in 1862 there is no reason to think women were better off in Edinburgh than in any other town of the same size. A report seems to have gone forth, however, of the superior advantages offered by some institution, and S. J.-B. went north—accompanied by her faithful maid, Alice—full of hope and ambition. On her last night at home, by an interesting coincidence, she heard a sermon that impressed her on the text: “They have no changes: therefore they fear not God.”
The link that bound her with the world on which she was entering was of the slightest. Mrs. Burn Murdoch (née Miss Dora Monck Mason) was an old schoolfellow, a contemporary of Caroline Jex-Blake, and the traveller carried with her an introduction to Miss Margaret Orr, sister of Captain (now General) Orr who afterwards married one of the Norfolk cousins, Miss Henrietta Cubitt. In these acquaintanceships—both of which were to ripen into lifelong friendships—S. J.-B. was very fortunate; but as far as the immediate object of the pilgrimage was concerned, she was destined to bitter disappointment.
Here is her own account of her first lesson:
“Then went in to the Arithmetic class. Found the first division doing Proportion! And, oh, such teaching! First question:—‘If cloth is bought for 2s. a yard, at what price must it be sold to gain 25 per cent?’ ... exhortation following in this style,—‘Now say and exameen carefully’ (broad Scotch) ‘I think ye’ll find it need consideration, etc.’ ‘It’s not quite a deerect question, etc., etc.’ ‘Now what will be the third terrm?’ ‘Stand up the ladies who can answer. What, Miss McCreechie! I think ye’ll hardly tell me, but ye can try, etc., etc.’ And, sure enough, long took this abstruse question to solve.
And such a lesson! No explaining,—some scolding, some shouting,—a good deal of cry and small wool. Then he came to me. ‘Can ye do proportion?’ ‘Yes (!) I want to do Algebra.’ ‘Ay,—but that’ll be Friday. But do ye know Fractions?’ I intimated an idea that I did. He didn’t seem at all to believe it,—‘did I understand them?’ I felt rather absurd and hypocritical, and again said I did rather decidedly. However not a bit would he believe me,—gave me (as a severe test, I suppose) ¾ x ⅝ to do and explain. Well,—did it! ‘But why?’ I am sure I shall always hereafter have pity on unfortunate examinees pounced upon. The whole thing seemed so absurd,—I was so annoyed,—it seemed so silly standing up by that imp of a Sandy with a slate,—that I very nearly failed to give any rational explanation. However I did somewhat, and he had rather grudgingly to grant, ‘Ay, I see ye know it.’ Then, when I asked him about the Algebra, it seemed he had none but quite beginners (don’t I pity them?) and ‘it wasn’t his subject’! in fact, clearly enough he didn’t know as much as I did. Amazed at my astounding erudition, ‘Where had I learned?’ ‘Oh, in England.’ ‘Ay?’ (very surprised) ‘the English gairls generally come very bad at Arithmetic,—we’ve one just now doesn’t know her tables.’ I laughed out. ‘Well, you mustn’t take her for a specimen.’ He seemed to think that the national average! ‘Ay, but most we’ve had are very bad at it,’ very resolutely. He must be a good judge by the specimen I saw. Well, he kept hovering round me as a sort of strange animal, and told me how the girls changed every year, and how he went through from the First Rules to Decimals as the ne plus ultra.”
Clearly there was nothing to be gained here, so next morning she “explained and apologised” to the Principal, and found him “very nice and pleasant.” Her first impulse was to go straight back to London (in fact arrangements were made for her to live with Miss Wodehouse and study at Bedford College) but in the end wiser counsels prevailed. That arithmetic class was not the high-water mark of Edinburgh achievement even as regarded the education of its women. S. J.-B. made the acquaintance of Miss Blyth, who introduced her to Mr. Begbie, Miss de Dreux and others, so she settled down to a varied course of work, living comfortably in lodgings with Alice to “do for her.” To Mr. Begbie she expresses her gratitude over and over again.
“Mathematics not much with S. In answer to Miss de Dreux told the truth. They so nice sensible and honest,—teachers born, ‘without respect of persons’. Mr. Begbie glad to hear truth,—promises me a better far tomorrow. Mr. Weisse a good teacher,—right good. German less formidable than I expected.”
One gathers from the letters that she made an extraordinarily vivid impression on her teachers: several of them refused to take fees, and Mr. Begbie persisted in his refusal.
“Miss de Dreux said my coming and work had given her a fresh impetus and help forward. Isn’t that nice?”
On the whole these first months in Edinburgh though she talks afterwards of their “grey pain,” were perhaps the high-water mark of S. J.-B.’s life as regards sheer balance and beauty of living. She was having, it is true, no physical recreation, but, apart from that, her faculties were all called equally into play. She was working steadily and hard, chiefly at her beloved mathematics: her wider reading included Jane Eyre, Le Juif Errant and Aids to Faith: she was profoundly interested in religious problems and conscientiously attended the churches of the best-known Edinburgh ministers: she was happy in her friendships, and still more in the passing beauty of her relation to her Mother: above all, the flame of her religious life—in which was almost merged at this time her devotion to Miss Octavia Hill—was burning with a clearness that made it easy to ignore the little jars and frictions. Even politics were not crowded out. “Daddy is here,” says Mrs. Jex-Blake in one of her letters, “and says, ‘Tell dearest Sophy I would not have the Times, which she makes such excellent use of, given up on any account.’”
One cannot read the record of this period of her life without feeling that it was mainly here and now that her character was made,—that it was the resolute determination with which she took to work and stuck to it as the remedy for intolerable heartache—that enabled her in later years to bear the brunt of all she came through.
It is interesting to hear what she herself has to say about the various elements in her life referred to above:
“There never was such a book as Jane Eyre—of its kind. Talk of ‘finding’—that finds me through and through continually. How people dare speak ill of such a book,—I suppose they simply can’t understand it. Its grand steadfastness and earnestness and purity, is something glorious. I read and re-read it as I never could another novel, and how it helps one!”
Again:
“Aids to Faith put into my trunk by that dear old Mother who in her weaker moment entertains an uncomfortable kind of desire to proselytize me,—and yet can’t be quite dissatisfied.
Immensely interested in Aids to Faith. Read Cook’s Ideology and Subscription, Brown’s ‘Inspiration,’ and am reading Mansel’s ‘Miracles.’ The last gives me a glimpse of light and clearness I never had before. As far as I have read (and remember Essays and Reviews, which I must get) I think this side has it. As to Ideology I don’t understand it and don’t like to take the whole account from the adverse side (though there seems great fairness and scholarlike equity). As to subscription, I think Cook has it,—I never could heartily sympathize with the other position, though I know it is held by quite good and honest men. I suppose one real question might arise,—Who is to determine the real sense of the Church? For doubtless very grave doubts are found among equally good men.
As to ‘Inspiration,’ though I like the Essay, I hold more with E. and R. a good deal. Most of all with Coleridge as quoted in Aids,—‘what finds me’ is its own witness, but why impose upon me what is not, because bound in the same covers?”
One finds among her papers brief notes of sermons by Rainy, Candlish, Guthrie and Pulsford, of whom the last appealed to her most.
“The prayers are what I can’t manage in the Scottish kirk. ‘Other people’s’ need too much effort to approve or disapprove to leave your spirit free to pray. I find more and more the value and rest of the Liturgy.... Saw Unitarian chapel. Shall I go? Don’t expect to be in near such real sympathy as with Church of England. Octa always said so. Bless her!”
For many reasons she was anxious to bring herself into line with the orthodox; she accuses herself of being too ready for an argument with her Calvinistic friends (what earnest spirit is not too ready for an argument at her age?) and at this time she read the Gospels carefully through “with a fresh mind,” taking notes that might have a bearing on dogma. If it distressed her to arrive at an unorthodox conclusion, this was mainly because such a conclusion seemed to separate her from those she loved best.
In the meantime she had made the acquaintance of Mr. Pulsford, and had called to have a talk with him about her difficulties.
“Much helpful sympathy and no horror of my questionings (how helpful that is!) but not much direct word gain. I suppose it must be lived out. He clearly does hold the Trinity, yet not, I think, as some do. Certainly not the vicarious Atonement. He uses nearly Maurice’s words,—‘To present humanity perfect to God.’ (I think they are Maurice’s.) He believes Christ the man to have been God, but at first in His manhood unconscious of His Godhead. This seems to me very questionable and not clear. However, as I said—and he agreed thoroughly—not being a question of spirit but of history, it is not vital to me now, and living and desiring to know, we shall know.
He again spoke strongly of not talking to people who can’t understand.”
The contrast of the next paragraph in the diary is irresistible:
“A mouse caught at last. Odd, how it annoys me! ‘Shall I drown it, ma’am?’ ‘Oh, let it eat its cheese first!’ How Octa’d laugh! Faugh!— poor little thing, how it struggled for its life,—and how my heart beat! It was some courage to resolve it shouldn’t suffer longer than need be.”
About her friends she has much to say as usual. On March 31st she writes to Cousin Ellie:
“Now for friends. I think I really may put that word to Dora Burn Murdoch and Margaret Orr, short as the time seems in days since I have known them; but then days sometimes go for weeks and they have both been so kind to me. ‘I was a stranger and they took me in.’ [Dora’s] charity for others is something quite beautiful, her unconsciousness of other people’s inferiority to her,—her width of thought, and power of understanding those differing most widely from herself—most admirable. You never hear her by any chance say a harsh thing, a spiteful thing or a narrow thing,—neither do you ever hear a weak one.”
She speaks many times in her diary of the rest and refreshment derived from visits to Mrs. Burn Murdoch. But she was working too hard, and Mrs. Jex-Blake’s letters at this time take on an even deeper note than usual of love, appreciation and solicitude. Varieties of note-paper were not great in those days, so S. J.-B. had possessed herself of a large quantity of common brown envelopes (similar to those used for the delivery of telegrams) in order that her Mother might see at a glance— without putting on her spectacles!—whether the postman had brought the all-important thing. Many are Mrs. Jex-Blake’s references to “the precious brown envelope,” “the dear brown letters”; and well might she prize them. Indeed one does not know which to admire more,—the painstaking labour with which S. J.-B., at the end of a hard day’s work, strove to keep her Mother informed of all she was thinking and doing and trying to do—or the painstaking labour with which her Mother strove to understand and sympathize. She writes at great length about Jane Eyre, about the higher education of women, and she enters into her daughter’s religious arguments with a largeness of soul that is simply uplifting:
“I expect,” she says, “I quoted in commas the very words you wrote about the Atonement. The rest was, of course, my able and learned commentary. I think I did take your words in your sense, though I couldn’t help their expanding—you will perhaps say, narrowing,—in my view. He will guide us both into all truth.”
The following extracts give some idea how these beautiful letters go on:
May 6th. “I don’t think I ever had a letter from you that I did not enjoy and enter into sympathy with, because I never will open them till I can enjoy them. Sometimes one has come at dinner time with others when Mr. O. has been here, and he has said,—‘Why don’t you open the brown letter? I know it interests you.’ I answer, ‘Just because I can’t fully enjoy it’.”
May 7th. “You have a glorious field of usefulness before you. No one can guess to what extent you may be permitted to be useful to the generations to come. Plod on; expect rough waves that seem ready to overwhelm your best energies, and almost quench life; but One sitteth above the water floods Who will always bear you through.”
May 8th. “My heart’s desire is that you should know the truth of God, whether it be what I believe or not, and that I should know it too.” (Previously she had written,—“I was thinking today how surely God would guide you into all truth,—this text confirming the thought,— ‘If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.’)
I think my cup of blessing would be fuller than I could bear did we two fully agree on that which must be all-absorbing and by far the most interesting of subjects. Though C. and I essentially agree, we cannot communicate with each other—our natures are so different. I don’t think I do her justice or fully understand her.”
May 9th. “We do well to struggle against that weary powerless feeling, because, given way to, it might overcome all power of energy, but I quite believe it is sometimes part of appointed discipline, and it is no use to quarrel with ourselves for it. Still I do incline to believe in your present case it proceeds from exhaustion of the nervous system, occasioned by a shock struggled against with all your power. You will be better when Dora is back, and you get real interchange of thought and loving sympathy. God bless her for giving it to my darling. Try not to allow yourself to think on getting up,—‘How long will it be before I lie down to rest again?’ Remember you desire to give yourself to service, though not so active just now, for others. Remember as a help how many bless you for having sped them on their way. Your want just now is someone to be helped and braced for usefulness.”
(“Never fail,” writes Mr. Jex-Blake, “to tell me of any case you know of like that of the suffering governess; it is blessed to receive in such cases, but doubly blessed to give.”)
May 10th. “Own darling, you write me such charming long letters, you quite spoil me.... I suppose your work in Edinburgh has been very intense while it lasted, and proportionately exhausting,—and then you don’t, as a schoolboy does, get any reaction the other way. You have no one to play with,—no positive recreation. I always think the games and perpetual ‘outings’ in public schools such a fine arrangement; and then an Oxonian or Cantab. has his boat or his ride, My darling has positively nothing. Don’t little one overwork herself: such concentration of thought as you give in one hour is very exhausting.”
May 11th. “I fear it is impossible for me fully to appreciate your child, and, even had you done differently, I question whether she and I ever would have got at each other, but I quite believe in the noble-heartedness you speak of. I would with avidity seize any opening she offered, but I fear she will not make it. In the present distortion of vision, she is more likely to suppose I am inclined to alienate you from her. Had your’s been a common friendship, I should have thought it possible that ‘Art might conceal too much,’ but she knows you in spite of all your faults and independently of them,—and surely the wine was a messenger of love. You dared not have sent it had you not been bound up in her.”
On a previous occasion Mrs. Jex-Blake had written on this subject:
“How very remarkable and interesting is Mr. Pulsford’s statement about valued friends apparently lost for a time. I had no idea that your’s was a case that ever occurred,—I mean of increased love—a stronger, deeper, truer love: it is really very grand.” “I fancy I like ‘Sorrow’ better than ‘Fidelis,’[24] but the latter is wonderfully your picture. I can scarcely grasp it, though I wonder and admire.”
Footnote 24:
Poems by A. A. Procter.
May 13th. “I have nearly finished Jane Eyre, and like much of it exceedingly. What I object to is the personal handling she allows ... and, grand as her conduct is, she marries a man of very exceptionable conduct, and who to the last had a relish for swearing.... I think she makes St. John very unfairly disagreeable,—his icy coldness very unnatural....”
May 15th. “Well, darling, you and I must wait to talk it out about Jane Eyre. I shall never be able to write it out. It appears to me you have built up a wall to knock down.[25] I don’t at all ask a different code of morals for men and women. But I do wish a woman to be refined and pure, not because I am conventional, but because I think it essential to self-respect and dignity.... I don’t believe high-toned governesses fall in love with their employers.... I think it very cruel upon the race of governesses to put it into people’s heads they are to fall in love. I always, since I took a district in 1836 felt the tenderest, most motherly pity for any misguided girl.... I certainly never did or will read impure things in books or newspapers. I consider familiarity with impurity rubs the bloom off the plum, which never can be restored. Minds differ, some almost enjoy to read queer things. Impurity does not seem to me to find any response in you: you can come in contact and it runs off like quicksilver—leaves no print. I don’t think that is common.”
Footnote 25:
The letter has not been preserved.
“A letter from Elinor. She talks of enjoying your letters so much.... I am very glad Plumptre has sent you a testimonial you like. I fully expected he would send (if asked) a very handsome one.
The world has many kind hearts, has it not?—none like my own child.”
And again, talking of a sermon she had heard:
“I thought of my precious child when he pictured a strong character with exceeding depth of tenderness and gentleness.”
One understands more and more fully the fervour with which S. J.-B. was wont to say in her later years,—“No one ever had such parents as mine!” “How I wish you had known my mother!”
* * * * *
One naturally treats S. J.-B.’s religious life at this time as something apart from her questionings about dogma, for indeed the two belonged to different categories of her being. The following is one of the few letters of this period that have been preserved:
8 p.m. March 17th, 1862.
“DARLING MOTHER,—I know you care to hear all your child’s thoughts and hopes and feelings,—I know you will not condemn for conceit and egotism what might seem so to other people.
I want to talk to you,—I feel so sure you want to hear. I want to tell you what a glorious Strength and Power has come out of all the sharp pain,—how I feel that I am a better person, a stronger and more real one, than I ever was before....
Some one says that it is ‘not pain undergone but pain accepted’ that bears fruit an hundredfold. You know the acceptance has not been easy,—you know sometimes the flints have cut my feet deep enough, but thank God for two things—I never for any single moment lost the absolute certainty of Infinite Love and Wisdom ‘brooding over the face of the waters,’—the certainty of my Father’s arms around me,—and secondly that no suffering or pain could shake the love that has never been half so strong, so real, so ideal, so unselfish as now. I doubt if I ever half knew what being a friend was before,—I think I have earned the knowledge now—some of it.
And, Mother, about my work. I cannot tell you the strong exulting feeling that seems to set God’s seal to my work, in that through all the personal agony I have held firm to that: at no moment, I believe, would I have purchased what I longed for most on earth at the price of that,—that I have felt through all ‘The light may be taken out of my life (and thank God how far that is from being so!) but the object never can!’ Don’t you know how the lines that reminded us of the oath upon our head, that bade us ‘never again our loins untie, or let our torches waste or die’ was the strong helpful thing through it all.
And though I did believe in myself—and thou ever didst believe in me, Mother!—yet so long as my work ‘walked in silken shoon’ and lay side by side with the pleasantest life possible for me, there was a certain thought about fair weather sailing,—a certain (not doubt, but) diffidence in looking on to the time of breakers,—a feeling as of David, ‘I have not proved them.’ But now I feel that I have come to the proof,—that my armour has not failed in the battle,—something the sure happy confidence (farthest of all from presumption) ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ You can’t think how it ‘heartened’ me (you know that nice old word?) to find that truly as well as verbally my work does hold the first place....
I am beginning to have hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life—I may yet be fit to be the head for which I am looking so earnestly....
But all seems centred in the one thought, ‘Lead Thou me on!’—or rather, not ‘me’ but ‘us,’—all the wanderers.
Yours very lovingly, SOPH.”
Not that S. J.-B. was ever conventional even in her religion. Here is a characteristic extract from the diary of the same period:
“You never have the common honesty, Jack, in this most private journal (they say hardly anyone has) to put down the thought if it crosses your mind ‘Well, I think I am rather a fine fellow’ or its equivalent. Because it never comes? Oh, dear your precious ‘humility’! I wish Miss W. could look into you:—do you? Not you, you humbug!
‘Well, but,’ (retorts S. J.-B. accused) ‘I do work with a single purpose,—I have tried very hard, and, am sure, succeeded somewhat in this hard battle of these months,—what is the good of pretending to call myself names? Did not Job ‘maintain his integrity’?
You coward! You must skulk behind Job. Looks respectable, does it? Say honestly ‘I do try harder than some people do,’ for in truth I believe that is all your conceit does amount to.
I know from my heart I do recognize and reverence holiness and purity as far above mine as Snowden to a mole-hill. And is that conceit? I don’t believe it is. No,—‘Not guilty, S. J.-B.’ Plead boldly, and don’t give in for shamefacedness. And besides you have no right to deny His triumph ‘Who giveth us the victory,’—by fighting modest on the sham. You have won some victories. Thank God quietly, and pressing on to the things before. ‘I press towards the mark.’ God knows—and you know—there are enough to win. Oh, how far away lies doing even what is our ‘duty to do.’ But I don’t know that the realest soundest life limits itself to calling itself ‘miserable sinner.’ Zacchaeus told Christ what he tried to do. He did not rebuke him as man does and say, ‘No, believe yourself utterly vile (for the glory of your Maker?)’
There,—go to bed, S. J.-B.”
A few days later she recurs—as often—to the broken friendship:
“... Well, I note markedly how, with all this light, all this growth,— respecting the suffering—(and I think all this would have brought a ‘right judgement’ too) I do not swerve one iota from my judgement of facts. I cannot conceive it one hairsbreadth more possible that any but a mental cloud can have worked in the way it has,—that under any possible circumstances my child, with her glorious nature and heart, can have acted as her image has....[26]
But while I have at last manfully and honestly and cheerily faced the possibility of never seeing her again on earth—while I believe my loins are girded for the way quite irrespective of any future fate regarding her and me—while, having put my hand to the plough, God shall grant me grace never to look back even for her (who, God knows, is far enough before me) never to linger irresolute with thoughts that should and shall urge me to double speed,—yet it is curious how the whole fashion of my life shapes itself with the arrière-pensée of being ready for her ‘at midnight or cock-crowing or in the morning,’— saving with the thought of her as well as myself,—looking at every path as it opens to see that it is wide enough to tread together if she joins me ere its end,—making the most of the working time now that a pause of rest may fall due whenever she comes to claim the ‘moon.’
And I think, could she see my thoughts, my plans, my work, my resolves, she would not have them otherwise.”
Footnote 26:
More than a year later Miss Hill wrote: “I wonder if it would be any comfort to you if you could know the infinite love the thought of you, specially of any pain of yours, calls up ... how passionately do I cling to a like trust in you that your pain may not be tenfold increased ... by any sense of desertion in spirit.... And yet, Sophy, this thought of me must fail you as time goes on, for you cannot see why I act as I do.... My love will be ready for you when He who is teaching us both shall bring us together again.”
X. GERMANY
It was perhaps well that an interesting new factor came into S. J.-B.’s life at this moment. Miss Elizabeth Garrett (afterwards Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D.) had made up her mind to be a doctor, and, in the teeth of many difficulties and much opposition, was striving to obtain the requisite education and prospect of examination. A great effort had been made to get the examinations of London University opened to women, but the resolution (brought forward by Mr. Grote) had been negatived by the casting vote of the chairman—the vehement feeling shown by the opposition being, in the opinion of the proposer, quite out of proportion with the cogency of the arguments brought forward.
Miss Garrett had been in correspondence with S. J.-B. for some time as to the nature of the prospects in Edinburgh, in case London University should fail, and after talking the matter over with Mr. Begbie and other friends, S. J.-B. urged her to “come and see.” Small prevision had anyone concerned of all that they were to see in Edinburgh a few years later.
“Miss Garrett and her strength!” writes S. J.-B. in her diary on May 19th, “making me break the 10th commandment. She doing Trigonometry, Optics, etc. Running where I crawl!”
And on the 20th:
“Today Miss Garrett’s business. Wrote about ‘Commission.’ Twice to [Royal] Circus with very sore feet. Mrs. Darts, friend of Lord Ardmillan. Lady Monteith (Lord Advocate). Argyle. Hope she will come. It will be everything to have her to help a little if I can.”
“May 29th. E. G. coming tomorrow,—sent her off a telegram this afternoon in case she might stay another day for the report I promised, and so lose tomorrow’s appointment with Balfour, whom I saw today with that splendid man, Begbie, who went down last night and this morning with me, and is to arrange with Newbiggin tonight for an appointment for her. My sore foot quite lame and not helpful for this bustle. However I believe I shall have done a bit of real work for her, and, as I said to Begbie, if there are such people, ready to face such an ordeal let’s help them in God’s name. One great obstacle the (sometimes) ‘faux air’ of consideration for ladies’ delicacy. People don’t seem to see how that is her affair. Besides she has faced it: it’s a day too late.”
How familiar all this talk was to become some half dozen years later!
Miss Garrett remained in Edinburgh for a fortnight, and during that period the canvassing went on. Mr. Burn Murdoch used to say that, when the two young women went about, interviewing great ladies and important citizens, considerable surprise was expressed that Miss Jex-Blake was not the applicant. She was so tall and high-spirited, with great flashing dark eyes, while the real heroine was small and almost pretty, and fair.
Strangely enough, S. J.-B. was not at all fired at this time by Miss Garrett’s example. She meant to be a teacher, and medicine as a profession did not tempt her in the least. She had her doubts even about the value to herself of a University degree in Arts (supposing it could be had!) although Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Davies were both anxious that she should be of their number. “Chiefly I want you to make up your mind to obtain the University degree,” writes Miss Garrett. “You are one of the few who could do so pretty soon, and it would take most women a year and a half or two years to prepare for the Matriculation.”
In any case the opportunity did not arise. The following letter to Mrs. Burn Murdoch explains the situation:
“June 21st, 1862.
DEAREST DORA,
I do not know whether we are to look upon the result of the Physicians’ meeting most as a defeat or as a triumph,—the motion ‘to consider the question of admitting Miss Garrett’ was negatived by 18 votes to 16,—very disappointing as regards immediate results, but very much as a victory for the principle, just as at London University. You see they have not refused to admit,—only postponed the question indefinitely, so that, when time and opinion have been brought to bear, they can again entertain it without inconsistency.
In the meantime the expedition to St. Andrews was very successful,—Dr. Day and Principal Tulloch were both warmly favourable, and it seems quite probable that Miss Garrett would be admitted to the University there,—only unfortunately you see there is no medical school there, and so it would be but half a solution to the difficulties as she couldn’t get ‘nice little subjects’[27] there....
I have only just come to anchor after some 36 hours’ incessant trotting about, etc., so I daresay my intellects are ‘even weaker than usual’ as C. A. would say.
I suppose I may now thank you again on paper for all your help, dear Dora. You can’t cough me down so conveniently. You don’t know how much you have helped me through.
Yours affectly, S. L. J.-B.”
Footnote 27:
Talking of the difficulties in the way of Practical Anatomy, someone had suggested that Miss Garrett should get ‘nice little subjects.’
Previously to this decision, S. J.-B. had published sensible letters on the subject in The Scotsman, The Daily Review and other papers. She also drafted an amusing letter in reply to her own, supposed to have been written by one of the retrogressive “unco guid.”
“Well, it was grand fun,” she says in her diary, “and, if it had got in, might have played very well; but the chief temptation was the immense fun it would be. E. G. and I both thought we could command our faces. Her sister opposed, but we agreed, ‘No harm. We don’t sign to it,—and it’s what some might say; and, if the Review puts it in, it’s their look-out. It’s so weak, it can’t do harm that way.’ She said, ‘Don’t let me know about it.’ I said she was very much like ‘Tom, steal the apple, and I’ll have half.’
Well, we agreed to send it and no harm done. I went to bed. I wasn’t quite content, yet I didn’t see any exact wrong,—and it was such fun!...
Then somehow those dear eyes fixed themselves on me and I felt their sad grieved look. I can’t, I can’t,—they would grieve,—‘Oh, Sophy!’
For a minute I went back,—‘Nonsense, no harm,’—then—
‘Let all thy converse be sincere, Thy conscience as the noonday clear,’
and those words ‘righteous altogether’ rang in my ears....
I went out to the sitting-room and sat down to write, and my first words to E. G. were, ‘Oh, I’ve annihilated the Review paper; it’s not righteous altogether.’ She said instantly, ‘No, I’ve been thinking in the night. I was going to advise you not to send it.’
My darling would be glad. God bless her!”
“‘Let all thy converse be sincere’: ‘and righteous altogether’.”
A real fighting life lay before S. J.-B.—a life in which she received and gave hard blows, and lost sight sometimes in the dust and turmoil—as a fighter must—of the right on the adversary’s side; but the words quoted above were the rock on which she built her achievement. One sees now that often when lawyers and other well-wishers thought her candid to the point of stupidity, she was simply determined that her converse should be sincere, simply striving to be righteous altogether.
* * * * *
Her great desire for years had been to fit herself for the work of a teacher, to found—or assist at the founding of—a wonderful college and (as the very height of her ambition) to be perhaps herself the headmistress. As she had planned Sackermena of old, so now she drafted detailed schemes of work, organization, finance. Such schemes, however, have been so much more than realized by the work of others that it is useless to quote them. She took a keen interest in the school at Bettws- y-Coed, offered prizes, set delightful examination papers in general knowledge, and wrote stimulating letters to some of the elder girls. Long before this she had written in her diary:
“Read the account of the College in Ohio for both sexes. Well, ‘Be thou but fit for the wall, and thou shalt not be left in the way.’ I do trust some day to graduate there or elsewhere. But still the great thing is to be able; the actual fact matters little.”
The reader will recall, too, the letter to her Mother:
“I am beginning to have hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough,—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life,—I may yet some day be fit to be the head for which I am looking so earnestly.”
Any girl in the present day who was fired with such enthusiasm would have countless advisers ready and anxious to give the necessary guidance. How different things were in S. J.-B.’s girlhood may be gathered from the facts of her pilgrimage to Edinburgh and search for education there. She wanted now to go farther afield—to study the state of women’s education in France and Germany, and—after some considerable hesitation—her Mother supported her in this desire. To her father, however, the feminist point of view remained a sealed book—“Truly to him,” she says at this time, “my whole life is as the ‘sight of dancers to him who heareth not the music,’”—and many objections on his part had to be overcome. Germany was so far away, and France was peopled with Roman Catholics on the look-out to pervert Protestant girls.
“While you are so young,” writes Mrs. Jex-Blake, “there will be a fearful struggle to make Daddy bear your going abroad. We belong to a Society for Governesses to protect them when they go for the language,—young women have been sorely tried by bad R.C.s to make them perverts or corrupt them. And he has heard so much of this that Germany would be less terrible to him than Paris.”
“Written to Mummy at length about Germany,” she says. “Oh, the weary kind of languor that deprecates work and talk! It seems almost too much to have to do what is so hard, and to have, too, to justify it to others.”
The letter to her Mother has been preserved:
“May 1st 1862.
DARLING MOTHER,
... I had hoped that Germany was an accepted fact,—not only to you, but to my Father, as at his (or your ?) wish I took that before France, and at your’s before America.
I believe, my darling, that I am trying to look simply and earnestly at my life simply as an instrument for my work,—and shaping the one to serve the other.
I have long formed the conviction (which daily experience and the opinion of others strengthens) that best of all now for my object will be the devotion of years to the observation of other systems and the endeavour to glean everywhere materials for my future edifice. I believe that my work has come definitely before me as early as it did, with the express intention that I should make this use of years which later I could never recall.
It seems to me the simplest verbal expression of the presenting our lives a holy sacrifice, as is our reasonable service, to say,—God has, I believe, given me this work. I have certain qualifications and facilities for it. I will give up my life first to perfect those qualifications and then to use them as He shows me how. So now my whole intention and bent is to go anywhere in the world where, as it seems to me on sufficient grounds, I may expect to learn most for my work,—to learn what will make me myself a better scholar and to learn what will most help me to organize (if organization falls to my lot) a better system here in England.
If I am myself to be the head, I will make myself as good a one, God helping me, as He has put in my nature the material to make,—if I am to be a servant I will certainly be as thorough and complete a one as is in my utmost power. I do from the bottom of my heart pray God that on no failure may be written, ‘Had I worked more earnestly, more wisely, more diligently,—this had been avoided.’
You know, Mother, the purpose of my life,—you know the consecration, as I trust, of every power to one aim,—you have helped me nobly, gloriously to keep it in view,—you have told me that ‘manfully to fight under His banner’ is more blessed than ‘dreaming out life even on Mother’s shoulder’....
Well, Mother, you know my object, you know my hope. Look for yourself and tell me if you see for its fulfilment any course to be adopted rather than the one which seems to me marked out. Look at the work and that alone. Look at my life merely as the instrument,—see how it may best be turned to account,—most solemnly it is my deepest desire to arrive at a true answer.
What could I be doing that would as readily and as really forward my aim? In what way could I as usefully devote my time and power?
I believe most earnestly that it is not to any one plan or scheme of my own that I cling,—show me anything better for my work—show me anything even that you yourself think as good for it (looking at it only) and I am willing, renouncing every present thought, to take the new into deep consideration, and trust to the guidance of the Light to show me which is my appointed path.
But take the question by itself,—satisfy yourself whether you think I have judged rightly, as at least I have striven to judge honestly,— and, if you arrive at my own conclusion I think you will feel that that is the only important thing,—that if we are enabled to ‘perceive and know what things we ought to do’ we shall also surely be given ‘power faithfully to fulfil the same.’
As I have said often before, if you and my Father ever need me at home,—ever even desire my presence there,—I will relinquish for the time everything to that which I am sure God would have me hold my highest and dearest duty,—But I believe nothing else on earth must be suffered to come between me and my work, and, please God, nothing shall.
I see ‘my Father’s business’ clearly before me,—help me, Mother, wholly to consecrate my life as I would wish, to it.
As to all questions of detail, I think, darling, you need not be disturbed or anxious. Acting rightly, I am quite sure I shall be always cared for far more than I deserve. I think you have, and may have entire confidence in my practical common sense,—I think I have already shown that I am not very likely to get into difficulties. You have trusted me a great deal, Mother, have you had to repent it?
You may be sure that I shall strive my utmost to do wisely as well as rightly—indeed the one cannot be without the other. I think, moreover, you will be almost certainly satisfied with my plans and arrangements,—I am sure I have ‘caution’ strongly developed. And, though it may seem more new to you, I am very unlikely to find in my new life as difficult circumstances as those in which I have already had to act. I think that you may have confidence that I know you trust me, and that I shall not fail your trust. I think you may believe that I shall know and think of your wishes.
Then, as to any anxiety for myself. You have said much to me in the trials of the last months which I would ask you to repeat to yourself. You have told me to trust my darling in perfect faith to ‘Him who keepeth Israel’ and whose love you tell me is deeper and truer than mine. Can you not trust me to Him too?
I think there were some circumstances which there are not here, which did not make it easier.
And in truth, Mother, what is there to fear? If God (as I believe) needs my life to do a work for Him, He will surely keep it safely till that work is accomplished. If He does not, wherefore should one live? Could you regret for anyone you loved that they ‘in youth should find their rest’? When one feels completely how each of us is a link in God’s great chain,—how individual life and care sink out of sight, as hardly worthy notice. How one feels the whole object and end of life to be that God’s will should be done in us and by us in life and in death.
And whether in one or the other matters so little....
You see, Mother, I have had very much lately to realise all this;—that time and distance,—that all severance—are things of time—and shall be cast into the lake of fire. That now we have to do God’s work, ... that here we are not even to look for the fruition....
I have to cling very very earnestly now to principles,—I cannot see for myself,—my teachers are removed out of my sight,—I can only cling to the belief which is above and beyond all that that very sight and those very teachers were but instruments of the great Guide,—and that now without them, as before with them, ‘the Lord alone doth lead him.’ As I said this morning, so it seems to me tonight the root and fountain of everything ‘The Lord reigneth,—let the earth rejoice.’
Yours very lovingly, SOPH.”
It is not to be supposed—nor desired—that all her letters to her Mother were on such a plane. Doubtless the weary flesh and spirit found expression often enough.
Of course that wonderful mother-heart never failed in sympathy, though naturally the Mother’s mind did not know what the strain of a modern woman’s life meant in those early days when circumstances were all unadapted to meet the new demand. “Little darling shall have all the rest I can help her to,” she writes about this time, “for greatly does her troubled spirit need it.”
And for a few weeks S. J.-B. really settled down to a restful time at home. “I am just now chiefly living in the garden and stable in my waking life,” she writes to Miss Lucy Walker, “but there is a sufficient portion not included in that.”
* * * * *
Meanwhile Miss de Dreux had recommended a family at Göttingen, who would be glad to have an English boarder, and S. J.-B. arranged to go to them. To the last moment before leaving home she was occupied in trying to persuade the mother of a sick friend to let the invalid accompany her, in the hope that change of air and scene might check the course of a mortal malady. One cannot be altogether sorry—nor surprised—that the mother refused.
So S. J.-B. started alone on July 21st, and crossed from London to Antwerp. “Delicious, cool and pleasant passage—smooth and comfortable. Beds on deck in a kind of room knocked up under the ‘bridge.’ Quaint night,—with crashing machinery, flashing lights, rough voices,— altogether weird and quaint.”
The choice of adjectives is curious, as it was not till many years later that “weird” and “quaint” became the stock adjectives in the vocabulary of the young.
She spent the night at Cologne, and went on next day to Hanover and thence to Göttingen. She was pleased with her quarters, her hostess, and her reception. What the family thought of her is another question, to which the records furnish no answer; for she was still feeling worn-out in body and mind, and nature simply insisted on a rest cure. She seems to have made little effort even to learn the language, much to the amazement of the elder daughter, who had enjoyed the advantage of a conscientious visit to England. So weary, indeed, was S. J.-B. that she actually chronicles the “great blessing” of being freed from Sundays for a while—of having rest all days, and “Calvinism, separation, none.”
“How peacefully came over me today ‘One sweetly solemn thought’ as they sat talking (I knew but a word or two) of someone found dead. How uncongenial A.P.’s remark, ‘I find these so sudden deaths awful.’ What she thought I don’t know, but I could not but say, ‘Oh, no!—going home?’
August 18th. Everybody going ‘zu reisen,’—Rhine, Harz, everywhere. Ah, childie, if you would only come quickly, we could have such a tour!— Alps,—Mont Blanc,—Geneva,—Venice, wherever you would; in a few weeks it will be too late. Too late! For that. But truly all is ‘in the fulness of time,’ and could we see and know, even our restless impatience would not hurry it....
As to money, well enough. I really expect to clear £20 of my allowance this quarter. I have that and about £1. 15s. in hand for stamps, washing and wine to the end of the quarter, besides £9 for rent. How jealously I do watch it! Really between my tour, my E.E.U.,[28] and my distant college, I must look out that I don’t turn into a miser in earnest! I get such a trick of watching and scraping halfpence! And yet I don’t believe I should grudge them either if need were.
And one must look to pence if one would do anything with pounds.
Still, I believe of the two I have really more to look out against ‘nearness’ than extravagance. I was right enough when I told Frid (that poor little darling, I am sure her’s are ‘vicarious sufferings’)[29] that she need never fear my spending 1/2d. I did not see my way to.
I expect, with my work, this is perhaps a fitness for it,—a surety against a great danger....
“Today Lina and I reading English. Frau brought a young man out, and Lina shut up all books at once—for the benefit of his remarks, I suppose. I, rather wrath, took up Rawlinson.”
Footnote 28:
Englishwoman’s Educational Union,—a society planned by S. J.-B., which should form a meeting ground for really qualified teachers, and also a means of registration.
Footnote 29:
Miss Miranda Hill’s loyalty and devotion to S. J.-B. never flagged.
During these weeks of comparative idleness, S. J.-B. was making enquiries as to a place where she could profitably study the position of the education of girls in Germany. Finally she applied for the post of English teacher in the Grand Ducal Institute at Mannheim.
As the Institution had embarked on a policy of strict retrenchment and economy, this was refused, but she had quite made up her mind to become an inmate in some capacity (as an ordinary pupil if necessary) and finally she set out without announcing her intention, in a fashion that recalls an adventure in the life of Lucy Snow in Villette.[30] The condensed account of this in her diary could scarcely be bettered:
“Sept. 13th. Saturday.[31] Left Göttingen at 5 a.m. with pleasant gifts from the children, and the famous glass knife from Frau B.
The morning cold, dank and misty,—darker than mornings are here even yet, I think. As we came south, perceptible increase of heat, till, leaving a cold autumn at Göttingen, we found a hot summer at Frankfurt. Went to Pfälzer Hof,—clean, cheap, and civil. Had a bedroom opening on a balcony, and very good night considering,—though, as I lay down, the venture rose strongly before me,—quite alone,—without counsel,—having come 200 miles to a place which had already refused me,—with the slender chance of personal representation prevailing,— uncertain, even if accepted, whether I could do the work,—in fact feeling strongly ‘not knowing whither I went’ yet trusting, like Abraham, I ‘went forth’. So fell asleep, seeing all perplexities, yet laying my head very softly on the pillow, ‘Oh, Lord, in Thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded!’
Well, I slept long,—breakfasted deliciously in my room,—dressed in black silk, etc., with no end of care, wrote a little note to Mother, almost to the beating of my own heart all the time.
Frl. E. had promised to come at 11. I waited till 12,—then came Frl. H. and Frl. M. Walked with them to the Institut,—was shown into the ‘parloir’ and left. They fetched me again,—walked round the square garden with its high convent walls[32] (oh, how I remember those white berries!) Then out came Frl. von Palaus with her fine port and clear good eyes, and round hat. I told her how I wanted to study German education, and wished so much to enter here.
She asked ‘mes conditions’. ‘Moi, je n’en ai pas, Mlle.’ She would ‘parler aux autres dames.’
Marie M. was to show me the house. Then in Miss von Palaus’ room:—
‘Would I come again at four?’ ‘Certainly’. Then a series of warnings for my own comfort:—‘ Very simple here.’ ‘I most happy to hear it.’ ‘Very plain little room.’ ‘I am no sybarite.’ ‘Mixed communions.’ ‘I only ask toleration for myself, and am most willing to give it.’ ‘But as to money!’ I leave it entirely to them,—any arrangement of theirs I agree to. Enfin I said I was sure to be more than content. I had no fears.
‘Would I stay and dine?’ ‘Very gladly.’ ‘Very plain food.’ I was no epicure, and sure to be pleased. So the result was, in fine, that I have never dined anywhere else since, and find my prophecy well fulfilled.
After dinner talked to the governesses; they said how comfortable they were. I thought, ‘I only wish I were in your shoes,’ for I had only asked to come anyhow, as pupil or anything. Then Frl. von Gruben came from Frl. von Palaus:—A teacher (a Frl. von Endert) was absent from illness for 6 months (was it not wonderful?) would I take her place?—but (as the Institution was only just struggling straight again after its shocks) without salary? ‘Very gladly.’ How my heart leaped, though I spoke very quietly. What a chance for saving, if not gaining, money,—literally to earn my bread. Now I could hope for money for my E.E.U., for the £50 for Christmas /63,—perhaps for Bettws school,— perhaps for a tour!
Well, again I saw Frl. von Palaus,—her face had satisfied me from the first. ‘Did I quite understand? Was I willing to have no salary and no expense?’ ‘Very gladly.’
So off I went at 4 p.m., gay as a lark. Settled my bill, got a cab, and by 5 p.m. (less than 24 hours from my arrival) was established in my little cell at the G.D.I., Mannheim!—‘au comble de mes voeux.’ Thank God!
And now I have been here nearly a month,—already established as if for years, in full sunshine of content.
At work again! And, thank God, with such strength for it! A new sap and strength in all my veins,—my heart in songs of gladness.
The heavy burden seems to have rolled away,—the sting and bitterness quite gone; strength and power returned to my hand,—colour and brightness to my life. Again I understand ‘the thrill, the leap, the gladness’—again the sunshine has broken over earth. Now I go up and down the long corridors, catching with my hand at a great beam, in ‘superfluous energy’ again, (my darling!)—a smile over my whole face as I think I will tell her of my life in this weird old monastery— young bounding life all around—I myself no longer ‘going softly’.
‘Thank God! Thank God!’ I can say nothing else.”
Footnote 30:
Mrs. Jex-Blake writes about this time,—“I feel such a real sympathy for the English teacher—Lucy Snow—it is quite a pity you haven’t it with you—I think your Institut and the Park and Ducal Palace tally very well with Villette. Fortunately you have no male tyrant like Monsieur Paul,—do you remember Miss Lucie being locked into an attic, with beetles, a rat, and possibly a ghost:—to learn in a few hours a part in a play?”
Footnote 31:
The account is really written some weeks later, as there was great delay in the arrival of the box in which she had packed her diary.
Footnote 32:
The building had originally been a monastery.
XI. LIFE AS A TEACHER AT MANNHEIM
To her Mother she writes:
“Sept. 15th, 1862.
MY OWN DARLING,
Though I must now be rather more economical of space (for I can send but 1/4 instead of 1/2 oz) I cannot resist beginning a fresh letter to you, having but just posted my last, with one also to Daddy. I am afraid Mr. Bevan must be again disappointed to learn that there is still no kind of prospect of starvation for me,—quite the contrary.
I will tell you our plans as far as I know them yet. We get up, as you know, at 5.30 a.m., breakfast at 6.30, begin work at 7. At 10 we have bread handed round, then at one we dine, very well, I think.... At 3 we teachers (!) have cups of coffee, and at 5 or 6 some grapes before going out for a walk. At 6 tea (or perhaps at 7) and then at 8.30 a regular meat supper. So you see we are not so very badly off,—indeed it seems to me to be something going all day almost!...
Mother, I can’t lie down without telling you of the very beautiful, soothing influence one thing has (perhaps unexpectedly) over me. I mean the perfect lovingness and charity in which we all of such opposite faiths live together, and have just knelt and prayed together. There seems to me something so inexpressibly touching and happy in it,—everyone seems so loving to the rest, so far from cavilling for ‘words and names’: each so absolutely free and all so far from seeking to proselytize. At meals we stand round the table,— ‘Nous voulons prier, mesdemoiselles,’ and in silence everyone together thanks God ‘in his own tongue’,—one marking only that some cross themselves silently and some do not. Then at night we kneel together,— we have a fine loving German hymn, and a text for us all,—words lovingly pronounced by our Roman Catholic head that yet every Presbyterian minister might say. There seems to me something so inexpressibly soothing in this union,—so far stronger than all differences. I can hardly tell you the rest and refreshment it is to me now, worn and weary as my spirit is. It struck me very much in its beauty tonight as Miss von Palaus pronounced,—‘There is but one name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved’, and we all received it on our knees,—Protestants and Romanists, Unitarians and Trinitarians,—each ‘in his own tongue.’ Was it not beautiful how just that name bound us all together,—Christians,—seeking at least the spirit of Christ who loved us all,—our Master,—that we might ‘love one another’....
I am charmed to learn the Scotch girl, Janet McDonald, has learned both Latin and Algebra,—both wonderful acquirements here,—and I look forward to perhaps doing some work with her, if she gets on well enough with other things.
2 p.m. Tuesday. The politeness of these girls is really quite refreshing. Last night, going up to my room after dark, there were several girls at the candle-stand, and, when I asked for a candle, one of them lighted one, and, with a reverence and ‘Permettez-moi, mademoiselle,’ carried it the whole way upstairs for me in spite of my efforts to get hold of it,—it being quite out of her way.... 7 p.m. Well, Mother darling, I wonder if you can sympathize in my intense exaltation and delight at the—for the first time in my life—literally earning my bread,—something like ‘My First Penny’, you know. I have had my ‘surveillance de musique’, but am longing quite childishly for the commencement of my special work,—I see teaching all around, and am just wild to be at it. Can Mother understand and sympathize?
Thursday 18th. My letter at last. I have been several times to the post in hopes of it.... Today I have had one lesson, and am just going to give another,—delicious! It’s really like oats to a horse who has been kept a year on hay. Miss Garrett was right enough when she said, ‘Get teaching!’ I quite laugh at myself to feel how radiant I am with delight at being again in harness.”
To Miss Walker she writes:
“Sept. 22nd. 1862. Mannheim.
DEAR LUCY,
You will, I think, already have heard from my Mother that I cannot now offer myself to accompany L. to Paris. I do not know if you are aware that three weeks ago I wrote to Mrs. B., urging her, as strongly as I knew how, to entrust L. to me for the winter, and offering to take her to any part of Europe which was thought best. I believe, at Mrs. Z.’s entreaty, Mrs. B. did consult some medical man on the subject, but I am sorry to say they confirmed her resolution of ‘keeping her under her own eye’—of course not understanding, as you and I think we do, all the circumstances.
I therefore got so decided a refusal that even I felt further entreaty to be useless, and, giving up the point, I entered at once into a six months’ engagement as English Teacher at the Grand Ducal Institution at Mannheim, where I have now been just a week, and therefore, of course, no further change is now in my power as regards my own movements....
I am much pleased on the whole with the kind of tone I find between teachers and pupils, and with the general principles, which, if not the very highest, are yet greatly superior to what you find in most English boarding schools.
By the bye, before I say Goodbye, I must tell you what horror my open window at night (even now) occasions the natives! Having violent headache some time back, an old servant assured me it was ‘the window’, and since I have been here I have been entertained with the account of a gentleman who went mad, as I understand, entirely from sleeping with an open window! So now you see the fate before you as well as me! Besides that, the doctor here (more shame for him) assures me I shall get a fever!
Goodbye, dear Lucy. Remember me to the B.s when you write.
Yours very sincerely, S. L. JEX-BLAKE.”
And again to her Mother:
“Sept. 30th. 1862.
MY OWN DARLING,
... It amuses me very much as a proof of how soon a habit is acquired (and also, I think, an evidence that it suits me very well indeed) to find that now, and indeed for a week past at least, I always wake of myself just at 5.30 a.m.,—usually just 5 or 10 minutes before I am called.[33] I wasn’t wrong about my power of adaptability, was I, Mother? Indeed I thrive greatly on hours, fare and all other circumstances; I have not been so strong for many months,—indeed now it is just a year. What a strange, grey, weird year!...
You see idleness and listlessness is about the worst thing possible (I was feeling that in Göttingen): now my days are full, not only materially, but really, for it is the kind of employment that does fill and satisfy me. And, I suppose, next to idleness, the worst thing would be over mental fatigue.... It is, too, another advantage, which anybody else can hardly appreciate, to have my day mapped out for me with military exactness,—to find my work always ready before me, and quite definite and imperative,—yet making no demand on my strength almost—always pleasant and always changing.
It would have been impossible to have planned a life suiting me personally more exactly to my finest need,—and the glory is that at the same time it is part of my work, and serving it very really and materially. I don’t suppose in that point of view either it would be possible to put my time to better advantage....
You see, Mother, how you get my sunny day-dreams now, as you used to get the weary ones. I don’t know if everyone has words running all day long in their head as I have,—it makes a glorious song sometimes— silently enough, but running like a golden thread through daily work and labour, raising it all till ‘the parapets of heaven with angels leaning’ come full in view.... Do you remember George Herbert’s delicious poem—?
‘My Joy! my Life! my Crown! My heart was meaning all the day Something it fain would say,— And yet it runneth muttering up and down With only this,— My Joy! my Life! my Crown!’
It is to me so exquisitely significant of the joy and peace that floods one’s whole being, but does not very readily find words, except in those already familiar to it, like those Psalm utterances,—or like sometimes fragments of our own dear Liturgy or hymns;—and I think that is perhaps one of the greatest uses and values of such things. In the deep struggle times, one of the things that helped me most of all was always those glorious words of consecration that reminded me of the cross on the brow ‘In token that thou shalt not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful Soldier and servant unto thy life’s end!’ And again, the Communion words about ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’.
Oh, dear, how one does write on! But I think it pleases Mother, and I’m sure it helps me....
I fancy my darling will be pleased to get a kiss from her little one to welcome her in London, as she cannot see her knight at Shoreditch!— dear old lady,—would she could! But, Mother, you would let Daddy go with you if you really wished for anyone? I tell you, as I have told you a hundred times before, how gladly your child will stay at home altogether if ever Mother really wishes for and wants her there, or will come from anywhere at any moment as rapidly as trains can bring her, if only Mother wishes for her for any purpose or none.”
Footnote 33:
She did not always find this quite so easy. On October 17th she writes in her diary: “Being all but late this morning, it is decreed that for one week from this time S. J-B. rises every morning while the stroke of the half hour and minute hand are ‘one and the same straight line.’
“Now, Resolution:”
It is scarcely necessary to say that Resolution responded to the appeal.
It is very unlikely that she gave those about her the impression of being dévote: that never was her way. The “spikes” Miss Octavia Hill referred to were probably in full evidence. In her diary she writes,—
“A talk with Miss E. and Miss H. about the sacraments, and ‘preparation’. Miss Gruben instanced with horror,—‘In England a party the night before.’ I said, ‘The theatre, with all my heart.’ Exclamations. ‘If I could not take the Communion half an hour after leaving the theatre, I would never enter it.’ Then found myself in the disagreeable position of apparent Pharasaism. ‘Wish I were so good, etc!’ or hints like that. Yet surely, Octa? If there is a time when we cannot kneel for the Communion, that time should be blotted out. ‘Living to God’,—how that blends and binds all life!
Today dear Mrs. Teed. God bless her! Yes, surely,—now she would not be hard on ‘prayer for the dead’. Yet what a noble soul! Ah, if she had lived,—if I could have justified myself to her whom I so respected. But, as Dora says, she knows it all now! Perhaps her spirit sees and sympathises with mine that looks with such love to her footsteps gone before. In life she would have disapproved of some things,—now at least she will see motives. ‘I believe in the communion of saints.’...
Just been reading C. Brontë. Moved me almost to tears. What honour and blessing to have dried some of those tears,—filled some void in that heart. And yet doubtless ‘He has fixed it well’. At least she and I and a multitude that no man can number all form portions of the Hosts of the Lord.... And it is the work—not our pleasure. The scattering is part of the benefit.
Ah, the Land of the Leal! The banishment past,—the solitude,—the tears,—the struggle. In hoc signo. ‘The Lord shall wipe away all tears from off all faces’.”
At this time she was extraordinarily happy in her work.
“How can people paint a teacher’s life as always such a suffering one! My room now quite a little Paradise. Frl. von Palaus up about it again this morning.... Now only some ivy and a tin pot wanted!
My Schematism [?] very light. Certainly they take a generously liberal view of ‘earning my bread’. Well, at all events it shall be well earned, if not largely. I’m half afraid of myself now that I have the responsibility of 25 English pupils. I am really very anxious to get them on so well and so rapidly as to convince the world of the wisdom of having an English teacher!”
How thoroughly she succeeded in this aim may be gathered from the letter of one of her pupils written a few months later,—
“We now have an English mistress. Miss Blake, and she gives us so many things to do that I am already too fatigued to entertain me any longer with you: she is an inhabitant of your land, and, if all people are so diligent there, it is a wonder that you are not all philosophers.”
Her diary abounds with shrewd and genial criticisms of her fellow- teachers. Of one whom she rather disliked, she says:
“Miss D. has greatly laughed herself into my good books,—such a cheery simple merry laugh. I don’t think anything very bad could hide under such a laugh at her age.”
And again,—
“That good Frl. von Palaus! Well might I today liken her to a sunbeam! How she lights up the very house,—how bright burns her lamp,—yet how simply!”
No wonder her letters were a joy to the Mother watching at home.
“Your letter has cheered me and done me good,” she writes on Christmas day, “taking away the clouds in a great measure, that would hang over a day that owed so much of its brightness to your dear presence; but truly, as you say, we have a far truer unity and a sympathy which I fear might never have come but through trial and separation.”
Life was not all spent on the mountain heights, of course. Even at this time she had her ups and downs like other people. Here is one of the “downs”:
“Who is sufficient for these things? seems my whole cry today. I don’t know why especially, but I seem so oppressed with a sense of the greatness, the weight of my work,—and of my own miserable insufficiency for it. Oh, so weak and stupid and unfit! And it isn’t humility,—it’s just truth.
I’m horribly showy,—always (voluntarily or not) deceiving people into a belief into talents I haven’t. Then I’ve will enough and would work, but no health or strength for it. That’s not your doing, S. J-B. ‘Hath not the Potter—?’
Besides, you’ll never be called upon to do what you can’t. God will give you power or send another in your stead.... And ‘who is sufficient?’ ‘My Grace is sufficient’.
Yet I am thankful, too, for even this fit of despair or at least downheartedness,—for I was fearing horribly, lest, my whole heart being bent on one hope and plan, I might be too far identifying my success with it, lest I might be seeking to win something for myself,—not simply to see God’s will done by me or without me. And from the bottom of my heart did go up, ‘Lord, put me aside utterly if need be!—and here, perhaps, the answer.’”
She did not always take her reactions so seriously:
“Cold. Therefore rather cross and grumbling. Prowling about the corridors with shoulders nearly up to my ears, mind do. And I fool and sybarite enough to conjure up pictures of a certain dainty little room with blazing fire.... ‘Shame on ye, Gallants, wha ride not readily!’... Well, well, indeed it was not really a grumble,—only a John Bull growl. You don’t think I really give in an inch for such nonsense?
No. Well, there, that’ll do.
As well to grumble to my book as to poor small folk downstairs, who want bracing not enervating.
Granted. But why either?
Oh, now you’re infringing the liberty of the press! I may write anything that wells up.
There, there!—pax.”
This is one of the many dialogues between “The Infantine” and “The Estimable,” as she called them. Greatly did her Mother appreciate the titles.
A few weeks later, after some words of yearning for a “comprehending ear,” a “sympathetic hand,” she breaks off abruptly with,—“Heigh ho! Shut up Grumbles! ‘a cussin’ and a swearin’ like that,’ as long coz would say.”
Greater troubles were in store than those constituted by cold dark mornings. No mention is made in the prospectus given above of holidays, and Mrs. Jex-Blake in her letters complains much of the “No holiday” system. Apparently the boarders only went home for a few days at a time, and for months together S. J.-B. does not seem to have slept away from the Institut for a single night. It was no wonder if, under these conditions, teachers and pupils “got on each other’s nerves,” and among Frl. von Palaus’ many qualifications was not that of being a strict disciplinarian. When the novelty wore off, the girls, after the fashion of their kind, began to try how far they could go with the English governess. As may be imagined from her previous history, S. J.-B., though an admirable teacher, did not show herself particularly strong in the matter of keeping order. The pupils found out their power of “tormenting” her, and the delicacy of their feeling may be gauged by the fact that on one occasion they gaily charged her with having “weeped in church” (“False, by the bye, in fact,” she says in her diary). With delightful naïveté they summed up the things she could not do. She could not sing, nor play, nor dance, nor paint, nor embroider?—“What can you do, Miss Blake?”
Of course she would have thought it unworthy of her to mention the things she had done and could do. Moreover, for reasons given above, she was spending a minimum of money, and vulgar schoolgirls drew their own conclusions. She sometimes admits with remorse that she was hasty and unjust in little things,[34] and, although there is no indication that she ever fell into the tempests of passion that characterized her girlhood, she owns that she often assumed a stony indifference, which, of course, though she did not know it, was a great deal worse. All the time (so her diary shows) she was almost agonizing over these children, longing really to get into touch and fire them with her own zeal; she did not scruple to talk to them seriously and individually about the great issues of life; but when the magnetic influence of the interview was over, they felt a certain inconsistency in her, a hastiness, a failure to conform to conventional standards of right and wrong, a want of equity, or at least of equableness, of which she herself was almost unaware. “But oh, where is the special flaw?” she cries in her diary. “Lord help me! ‘Thou wilt not pity us the less’—that fault of my own forms my cross.”
Footnote 34:
“I an’t just. There’s a fact. I’m sorry for it, but it’s true. As my sky is bluer or greyer, as I see, or think I see, more or less into a child’s character, the scale varies. Justice is blind no longer, but gives a chuck to one side or the other.”
In any case her pupils felt the flaw. Her conscientiousness, her zeal, her fine uprightness were more or less lost on them, or so it seemed. A cheaper form of goodness would have appealed to them more.
She never spoke of her home life and circumstances, and probably even Frl. von Palaus had very little idea that the English governess was a woman of family and position.
“Oh, how weary I am after those hours of struggle internal and external!” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “Almost like being tied to a stake,—so suffering, so helpless. And this I?—who used to fancy I had power to rule! Two months more will see me well nigh home I trust. Some faint foreshadowing of ‘Then are they glad because they are at rest.’ The thoughts of my green nest, and of the ruddy firelight, and the hymns at Mother’s knee very frequent in these days of struggle.”
She poured out the story of her failure to her Mother, and delightful were the letters she got in reply:
“(Miss v. Palaus) will miss my darling and her unselfish love terribly when she leaves.... Without any great vanity you must know that your hearty ready help must be most refreshing to her, and your wide-awake state must have a great influence over the Girls.”
“I cannot believe that your work has been done as indifferently as you think. I believe you have always done what you could, and fought hard against feelings and every form of indolence or selfishness. Surely you could somehow raise some response to fun; only perhaps a good deal arises from your being English and they not understanding.”
In spite of all, however, the trouble went deep, and she chronicles sadly in her diary that “neither moon nor stars for many days appeared.” Oddly enough, she never seems to have entertained the idea of simply giving in her resignation and going home. She entirely meant to serve her time,—nay more,—to hold the position until some suitable person was found to carry on her work. Certainly it was not the acquisition of the language that served as an inducement to remain, for, throughout her stay, she learned almost incredibly little. The whole of her very limited energy was thrown into her teaching.
“The hearty praise pouring in for the girls’ progress, ought to comfort me there,” she says. “I suppose they almost certainly have got on more rapidly than with 9 teachers out of 10.”
One is glad to learn that months before she left Mannheim, the tide of popularity turned; and, although even she attributed the change in great part to the fact of her having worn a “ravissant” gown at the School Carnival Ball (a gown which she had worn as a bridesmaid in England) she was glad to respond by expanding good spirits to the diminished pressure. So the pretty frock served its turn. “There’s no doubt about it that opinion altogether has veered round widely about me. I think I am rather popular now,—I certainly was thoroughly the contrary.”
She was, until the later years of her life, wanting in sympathy with the more or less innocent and pardonable vanities of youth, and yet during this period she did sometimes cry out for a more vivid life,—or rather for days and hours of greater vividness to break the monotony of the working life she had deliberately chosen. It was one of her ambitions to be duly presented to Queen Victoria, for whom throughout life she had a great admiration, but the ambition was never realized.
“Darling,” writes her Mother, in answer to a very human cry, “your young bright days are nobly spent for the Lord. Shall we offer Him that which costs us nothing?... There always has been (though probably not necessarily) so much that is false, impure and hollow connected with most of what are termed amusements that you would soon loathe them, and feel work and even discipline more satisfying.” But never for one moment from her twentieth year onwards did S. J.-B. ask for amusement and vividness in place of work and discipline.
She might have found recreation and stimulus in the music of Germany, but her chief limitation was on the side of Art. Music did not appeal to her, and, although one of her greatest gifts was the possession of a beautiful speaking voice, with a perfect natural production, she could not sing and had no ear for music at all. She argues with herself on the subject,—“Surely singing, for instance, is a wholesome and good amusement. Surely it is right that some should contribute it for others? Yet, perhaps, mere amusement, even for others, is not a life-work for anyone? At least unless as a duty. So few sing, as Fra Bartolomeo painted, ‘on their knees’.”
This is estimable enough so far as it goes, but artistic perception is wanting, and throughout life she never got much farther in this direction, though she always loved to hear a simple congenial song sung by one she loved. “Do you care for the ‘unlearned praise’?” she used to say. When she quoted, as she sometimes did, “’Tis we musicians who know,”—it was not of music she was thinking.
All through this period her main preoccupation was with religion. She was reading, among other things, the In Memoriam and Robertson’s Sermons, and she continued to read them till the end of her life. Her volumes of Robertson are falling to pieces with sheer honest careful lifelong use, and many of the sermons are marked with a date and with initials to remind her of the times when she shared her treasure with some special friend. Assuredly, in the words of her loved quotation, Robertson “found her.” Living, as she was at this time however, mainly among Roman Catholics, she felt—as so many have felt—a real desire to share their communion.
“I mean to study Romanism as thoroughly as I can,” she says. “Hitherto I have not by any means found, as C. Brontë, my repugnance to Roman Catholicism increased by close view.”
She was anxious to get a proper breviary or missal, and apparently finding this difficult in Mannheim, she wrote to her Mother to send her one. That wonderful old lady! She can’t have enjoyed the commission, but she set about the fulfilment of it most loyally. And, oddly enough, she too met with many difficulties. She declined to be put off with The Garden of the Soul, and finally she writes:
“I despair of getting a satisfactory breviary, unless you can send me definite orders for Treacher to procure one. Marvellous rubbish at the only R.C. shop. They were very anxious to fetch the R.C. priest!— to help me,—‘were sure he was within.’ Fancy if Daddy had come by, with the carriage at the door and I inside in deep conversation with said Priest!...”
No, there never was such a Mother! Her openness of mind shows itself in a hundred extracts. “I do not fairly know Thomas à Kempis,” she says. “The passage you quoted was very grand and beautiful.” “I wonder if you will care for my extract from Pusey in the ‘Times’. I always think there is such a chastened, disciplined spirit in what he writes,—no pepper, nor vinegar.” “If I were obliged to have a great deal of company, I should, I doubt not, feel ‘Lent’ a grand repose and comfort; as it is, I am disposed to kick at it as artificial.”
And she is no longer afraid to express her loving appreciation.
“I don’t call you so much a ‘sweet-tempered’ as an ‘excellent-natured’ girl,—most unselfish, energetic, and at all times ready in the behalf of others. A regular ‘sweet temper’ is rarely found with very strong deep feelings.... I don’t think there ever was such true love as your’s—unless it be her’s under disguise. You would not now be able to stand alone as you do had circumstances not separated you. God has two great works,—one for her, one for you.”
“I am quite sure, by pouring out your heart to me, you help me on as well as yourself. You bring before me such strengthening texts and poetry, and our hearts get so very closely knit. It may seem selfish to say so, but your sorrows have greatly enhanced my joys by bringing us close, and, as it were, entwining us inseparably.”
In a fine sermon on Old and Young, the late Bishop of Oxford dwells on the “tragedy going on in the life of many a home, ... as father and son or mother and daughter grow conscious, sometimes with silent pain, and sometimes with scarcely veiled resentment, of an ever-widening severance, a perpetual and almost irrevocable ebbing of sympathy and trust.” If any further proof were needed than has already been given of the wholeheartedness with which this mother and daughter resisted that tendency to severance and realized the sympathy and trust, it may be found in the correspondence that follows:
“Jan. 23rd, 1863. Friday night. and Jan. 24th.
MY OWN DARLING MOTHER,—I’m right sorry you didn’t get your baby’s first morning greeting,—I went out on purpose to post the letter on Friday that you might. It’s very tiresome too that the other little messenger didn’t reach you,—however Mother knows it was sent, and it’s useless to risk sending more the same way; you shall get it in duplicate when I come home,—whenever that is.
Sometimes I think I ought to stay here till I have mastered my difficulties and learned to rule,—then again I see that years and years of my life will be but a learning of that lesson, and the great thing is to see how to dispose of them most wisely, not in obstinacy or in self-consenting even on a point like that. Besides month after month of unbroken work does come to tell on one, specially if one starts not over strong; and I feel myself looking forward with significant expectation to the coming rest (and still more, refreshment time) again,—to say nothing of seeing faces and hearing voices that I fancy may too not be sorry to see and hear mine again. I am watching the now really lengthening days almost like a schoolchild,—indeed I am tremendously much of a child yet, Mother,—and thinking how the days and weeks roll on and bring the homecoming nearer. Even if I returned here, I must have a holiday and not a very short one,—for I have got a good deal used one way or another,— though now I am again delightfully cheery and strong,—and able to work twice as well among the children when a laughing word comes instead of a weary one; and they feel it too, I am sure.
I shall be very curious to read Colenso’s book,—will you send me its name, please? It is so very easy a way to get up a laugh (which somebody calls the Devil’s keenest sword) against opinions or people you don’t agree with, by such a jest as that Colenso wants to turn ‘the Bible into Rule of Three sums’,—so much more easy than justifiable or Christian. It’s just a word which, said of a great Mathematician, is sure to ‘take’ whether there is any or no sense in it. People like to laugh and repeat what sounds sharp, and prove their own superiority (?) to such men as they can’t hope to get within 100 miles of in attainments.
Besides in a certain non-sneering sense, it may really be true without inferring any blame. (I wonder if you like me to discuss the question or not? If not, just tear up the next page or two unread, that’s all.)
The Rule of Three (as it is most absurdly called) is perhaps the purest form of development of the principle of Cause and Effect,—the principle that rules the world and lies at the root of all science and all logic. You see an effect,—it must have a corresponding cause. You are aware of a cause,—you imply with certainty answering effect. ‘To look through Nature up to Nature’s God’—is strictly (if you choose so to call it) a Rule of Three sum. Again,—‘These are Thy works, Parent of Good,—Thyself how wondrous then!’—a pure syllogism,—or, if you please, Rule of Three sum—thus:
I. The author must be greater than his works.
II. God’s works are great beyond our conception.
III. How infinite then their Maker!
Or, more beautiful and more sacred than all,—‘He that spared not His own Son ... how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?’
The form of reasoning that St. Paul did not disdain to use need hardly be a reproach to Colenso.
God Himself does give us minds and does bid us use them,—He is not afraid of His truth standing in the sunlight, though some of His people are. Robertson draws out very beautifully how the Christ never sought blind credence,—superstitious belief even in His words because they were His. He never said ‘I say so,—there’s an end,’ (as so many of His followers like to put in His mouth). ‘If I say the Truth, why do ye not believe me?’—again, more exquisite still in its loving humility,—‘Though ye believe not me, believe the works’,—‘Search the Scriptures’ etc. etc.,—always praying them to test Him by His works, by the voice of their own conscience, by the testimony of their sacred books,—continually protesting against the idea of His own assumption of sovereign power, ‘I know nothing of Myself.’ But here I’m getting on another subject, and I’ll stop.
But I always get greatly interested in a discussion about the Bible,— people seem to me often so hopelessly superstitious and illogical about it, and so to miss its truest, most blessed meaning.
It always seems to me that the question divides itself into two perfectly distinct parts,—regarding, so to speak, the spiritual and temporal part of the Bible. The first is entirely without the province of the intellect or the reason,—‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, ... but God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit.’ As Colani says (I think, indeed, it was him I quoted before) it is not a question of logic or of evidence whether we believe ‘the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God Thou wilt not despise!’,—the certainty of its truth is self-evident to us; we are absolutely sure the moment we hear the words that the All-Good rejoices in repentance and not in blood. It is the word of God from without speaking to the Spirit of God within us ‘whose temples we are.’ In Coleridge’s forcible words, ‘it finds us’,—it pierces through ear and brain irresistibly to the spirit of every man. Yes, every man; there is not one in the world however debased who could doubt whether God preferred a broken heart or a costly gift. He may not think about it, he may let the words pass by him, but, receiving them at all into his mind, he cannot doubt....
Feel,—suffer, and words like those bring their own proof; let them once enter and you need not ask whether their truth is received or not. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ We know it is so; no one in the world could really doubt for one second whether holiness or impurity brings the man to God,—to see Him....
In all this the whole mass of ‘Evidence’ goes for absolutely nothing. If the Bible had never been heard of to this moment, and I picked it off a dunghill, those words and truths would just as irresistibly transfix and ‘find’ me as a two-edged sword.
But since, as Pulsford says, ‘Most people get their faith through their heart, not through their head,’—there are thousands of God’s children who, seeing and feeling the infinite beauty and pricelessness of these words and truths,—but not seeing fully their infinite omnipotence, their absolute impregnability,—fancy that to preserve from the slightest danger what is to them so infinitely precious, it is necessary to claim for the whole casket the same authority and value that the jewel claims for itself: and then, because this claim does not and cannot maintain itself, they rush to arms for it and brand as ‘rejectors of the Bible’ some who, like your child, find in its words the very deepest blessings of existence....
I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion worth anything, but as far as I can judge, it seems to me the result of open fair criticism rather establishes than disturbs the veracity of all Jewish history as given in the Bible since the time of Moses, while it does not seem to me possible satisfactorily to defend the authenticity of the account of the Creation and probably the first few centuries,—both from the certainties of Geology and probabilities of history, and also from the internal evidence.
But what is the leading point to me is the folly of trying to arrest honest investigation about anything,—and the especial mistake of fancying that any result arrived at could touch the real standing and position of the Bible. For myself, I can say in all sincerity that if not one fraction only but the whole biblical history were proved to be utterly unreliable and mistaken, it would not make the difference of a straw’s weight either to my life or my faith,—it is not as a rival of Herodotus that I have valued the Bible,—the destruction of the historical credit of the one would matter just as much to me as that of the other. We might lose some grand illustrations of God’s love and care, but the truths would remain, and the history of any century, of any land, of any man, leaves Him not ‘without a witness’....
Well, Mother, it has indeed been more than a page or two,—if it pains or wearies you do but burn it; but I am glad from the bottom of my heart to tell you honestly what and why I believe on a subject where I fear Mother is a little afraid of me;—to put at least calmly and clearly before you other thoughts and words than those you hear oftenest,—not that you may accept, but that you may consider them. For you as for me, Mother, God ‘shall lead us into all truth’.
Sunday. You asked me about Miss v. Palaus. She isn’t ill now, but I think she suffers altogether from this terrible ‘no holiday’ system. Think what it is to go on for 26 years!—with only a week’s break at a time, and that perhaps once a year.
Dear, I broke off abruptly, it occurring to me to apply the principle of how bad it was to go on without change and how one was bound to get all one could; also that it was a bright day and that I was no use where I was, so had better go to Heidelberg....
The sermon was about sorrow and bereavement, commonplace enough and disagreeable sometimes, but chiming in in bits with some thoughts of mine. For one thing he said it was a duty to rouse oneself after a time and go back to one’s daily work. Now, Mother, you know better than anyone how I have strained every sinew to take up my tool again and work on, from the very first months even. But there is a certain state of things which I can’t honestly conceal from myself which makes the struggle in some ways a very terrible one.
I am sure ‘what is is best’, and I don’t say one word in the form even of sorrow, only of perplexity. But, Mother, I haven’t the least the mind I had,—I have waited and waited to see if they would not waken but now for nearly 18 months my mental powers seem struck with stupor. It’s no use urging them,—they don’t answer the call. The love and power of mental work seem to have faded away. I just jog on from day to day with sense enough for daily life perhaps,—but I don’t seem to get any nearer any return of intellects. I won’t say it would have been better—because if it would, it would have been so—but I don’t doubt if I had had a crushing physical illness last Xmas, the agony would have exhausted itself and I probably risen from a brain fever as strong as ever,—but no physical relief coming in this form, the whole weight seems to have fallen on my brain and paralyzed it. My whole mind sometimes seems a blank,—the children ask me simple questions and I know nothing. Sometimes it’s hard work to crush back the tears when it is so.
You know those terrible (they did frighten me horribly) kinds of delusions that showed me a white dog or a wheelbarrow just when I was going to pull up when driving you.
Well, Mother, it’s no use to go on,—no use even to say ‘What am I to do?’ One feels sure in truth that God ‘will find a way’ and show it to me....
But the time goes on and on, very many months already, and yet no streak of light comes from any quarter. One does not see the faintest sign of change, and yet one cannot see how things are permanently possible as they are.
You don’t think it is any want of will or effort in me, Mother? Surely God ‘reaps not where He has not strawed’.
Oh, Mother, Mother, what it will be to rest the tired stupid old head on your bosom again.
80 lessons a week is too much I’m afraid for Ruth, but I can’t pretend to look after her when I’m in Germany,—and perhaps nobody gets on much the worse for that fact. It’s a very forcible rebuke to one’s vanity to find how little anybody is missed from anywhere, (except in their Mother’s hearts, darling) and one or two others perhaps. Yet that’s a hasty way to speak. I believe I do have a great deal of love from more people than I deserve....
Yours lovingly ever, SOPH.
Please tell me by what post this arrives.”
An able letter surely, for one whose “intellects” were worn out. Of course she fails to realize how different her whole outlook on life would have been if she had found the Bible for the first time accidentally in mature life, “on a dunghill” or elsewhere. The Mother’s reply is surely at least as able:
“Thursday, Jany. 29th.
MY OWN DARLING,
Your letter did not reach me till first post this morning. I quite believe Truth will in itself bear coming to the light, without suffering. But I do fear there are many minds, heads and hearts without one sentence of heavenly truth upon which to fall back for comfort, which may be irreparably injured by the doubt and contempt thrown upon historical parts; and thence deduce, ‘All is false, and cannot do me good or help me in any way.’ I think I must send you the last ‘Cornhill’ come in this afternoon. I imagine the critique in it is from a man who would favour free enquiry,—a son of Dr. Arnold’s,— Matthew Arnold. He says, ‘I censure Colenso’s book because, while it impresses strongly on the reader that the Pentateuch is not to be read as an authentic narrative; it so entirely fails to make him feel that it is a narrative full of divine instruction in morals and religion, etc., etc.’ I ought to have stated that all this comes in in a critique upon Stanley’s ‘Lectures on the Jews’, which Arnold greatly admires. Now that February is at hand, I find that the January! Macmillan has an actual critique upon Colenso. Shall I send it to you? I have not read it. I asked Hetty if she had. She considers it severe on Colenso. I think I shall send it.
Your long dissertation did not annoy or weary me at all, indeed it rejoiced mother’s heart. You seem to have all you want to live and die upon. What can you need more? Certainly I have individually great comfort and enjoyment from seeing Christ as my Substitute in a manner that I apprehend you do not. If it be, as I suppose, needful, I am sure your loving Father will give it you in His good time. As to your mental powers, it is very strange. We can only wait patiently and say, ‘It is the Lord. Let Him do what seemeth Him right’. I don’t suppose the important precious discipline you are going through could have been produced in time of full mental vigor. That will assuredly return if for your real good. Meanwhile you may well trust Him who has done such great things for you. I long as much as you to have you resting on my bosom. Rest you must have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.... Nothing, as you say, invalidates the grand truths responded to from within. At all times the Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.
Your loving Mother, M. E. JEX-BLAKE.”
A fortnight later she writes:
“Only fancy, Daddy has been reading Colenso’s book!”
XII. VARIOUS PROJECTS AND VENTURES
“Rest you must have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.”
So wrote Mrs. Jex-Blake in the end of January; but even the physical rest was destined to be long delayed. As explained in the previous chapter, S. J.-B. did not at all draw to the idea of deserting her post before a suitable person arrived to supply it, and that suitable person was not easy to find. So the months went by, and it was not till April was well advanced that all arrangements were made for her departure within a fortnight. She was wild with delight at the prospect of getting home, but the fates were unkind. On May 3rd she writes in her diary:
“Well, I do feel most uncommonly seedy,—no doubt about that,—having just waded through my packing somehow, and ‘bitterly thought of the morrow’, and how many leagues and hours lie between me and a snug bed, clean sheets and beef tea. But, somehow or other I do mean to push through and trust my luck for falling as usual on my feet, catlike. Specially anxious, by the bye, not to be spied out here or it’ll all go down to the baths”—she had been bathing in the Rhine before breakfast—“as I daresay this heavy cold may, which reduces me to, or below, the level of the inferior animals.
Well, three days hence! Who can’t hold out that time?”
She certainly did her best to “hold out,” dragged herself out of bed, and went downstairs looking like “une déterrée,” so Frl. v. Palaus said. She refused to see the school doctor, believing that he would prevent her going home, and also that he would insist upon her keeping her window shut. For some reason unknown Frl. v. Palaus resolutely declined to have an English doctor sent for, and so things went on for a day or two till the patient agreed that the German doctor should be allowed to say whether her throat was “of importance.” Whether he was allowed adequate means of arriving at a diagnosis we have no means of knowing. In any case his answer was in the negative. Two days later the patient was obviously suffering from a sharp and typical attack of scarlet fever.
It really was a blow, poor child! She was so longing for her Mother, “My year’s work just done so painfully,—and now my cruse snatched from my lips. It is hard, hard! I didn’t one moment doubt it was right,—only very hard.” Then like an audible voice came the reminder of the inner light, and all pain went.
It does not necessarily follow that she proved a very easy patient, though she tried hard to be reasonable, and even to keep her window shut at night, which was quite unreasonable. The whole situation was sufficiently trying for Frl. v. Palaus; and S. J.-B., although she and her nurse became attached to each other, got little of the petting which throughout life she so greatly valued when just the right person bestowed it. Her Mother’s letters as usual were an infinite comfort, and her Father was with difficulty prevented from sending out a London physician to look after her, and, in due time, bring her home.
She made a good recovery, and was allowed to start for England on the 27th, when an English lady was engaged to accompany her. “Very like getting out of purgatory into heaven,” she says. “The dear old folks!”
Her Father was nervous about infection, and, fortunately for him, a trifling driving accident some four or five days after her return forced her to consult “Sam Scott.” “He couldn’t swear me free of fever, but said, ‘If you meet my children on the cliff, you may kiss them.’”
* * * * *
So S. J.-B. settled down once more to the old life at home, not without occasional “cataracts and breaks,” for her Father did not advance with the times, and hers was not the only hasty temper in the family. But she never doubted that a definite work was in store for her somewhere.
Her diary is sometimes amusing reading. To an acquaintance who—after visiting at Sussex Square and hearing the intimate fireside names—wrote to her as “My dear Jack,” she replies,
“DEAR MISS D.,
Firstly I don’t like being called names, and secondly I have been overwhelmingly busy,—which two reasons must excuse my not having earlier sent you the address.”
“I agree with Macdonald,” is her connotation. “The only argument some people understand is being knocked down, and it’s cruel to withhold it from them.
And a very mild knocking down this time.”
“July 8th. Annette’s Sunday School. ‘The outward and visible sign in baptism?’
‘Please, ma’am, the baby, ma’am.’”
That her lamp was not burning dim one gathers from the letter that follows. It relates to the young invalid college friend whom she had wished to take with her to Germany:
“Nov. 15th. 1863.
DEAR LUCY,
Though I know you will have heard before this of dear L.’s going home to her rest, I think you will like to have a few lines from me, as I believe E. was not able to write to you herself.
You heard probably of her breaking a blood vessel last month soon after her return to London, and it was very soon after that that I saw her for the last time alive. She was very gentle and quiet then, and I have since thought that she more entirely realised how near the end was than I and others did,—for there was no immediate danger then as far as anyone could know. When I told her again how much a duty I thought it for her to take the utmost care of her life for His service Who gave it, and added ‘Not that I want you or anyone to fear death,—that is the last thought one should have of the Home-going’,— she said,—‘Oh, yes,—I never did, and I never understood why people do.’ I told her Mother of this afterwards, and it is a very pleasant memory, among others.
Well, it was on Thursday, November 3rd. that this terrible spasmodic asthma came on, and I am afraid the struggle was sore for just the week,—but there was mercy in that too, for it made her Mother glad to see her at rest after it. Just a week later she died, very peacefully,—passing in sleep into the rest that remaineth. I heard of it on Thursday and went up to London directly, and I never was more heartily glad of having done anything in my life, for both Mrs. B. and E. seemed so glad to see me, and you can hardly believe the peaceful happy few hours we had together,—indeed there came to me (and I think to them too in some degree) such an intense realization of what the joy and light was into which she had entered, that no room seemed left for any pain even for oneself. I did love L. very much,—more perhaps than any of you knew,—but when I stood looking down on that calm pale face, the only words that would come into my mind were,—‘He was not, for God took him’. It seemed quite impossible even for a moment to identify her with that chill silence,—one felt she was already in the everlasting arms. Dear child! She left altogether a very happy memory,—of a bright clear life, and a calm peaceful death. We ‘thank God for this our dear sister departed....’
The funeral is to be next Wednesday,—I know that you will not be absent in spirit, though you cannot be there in presence as I hope to be. Mr. Plumptre will read the service at Kensal Green.
I do not know if I helped dear L. in her life. I know that she has helped me in her death almost beyond my conception. I ‘never feared’ death, and I always felt theoretically how it was the ‘going home’ and that only, but I never felt it with the practical intensity of this week. I never entered before into half its beauty and its holiness,—I feel almost as if I could never associate sadness with the idea again. Let it come in what form it may,—‘God giveth us the Victory’.
Just before she died, L. finished a story at which she had been working to compete for some magazine prize,—if it does not win this, we hope to get it published separately, as a memorial that will be beloved of many,—and indeed I hope it may come out in this form. I have offered to undertake the whole business. It is very pleasant to me that she has left this,—is it not to you?
Goodbye, dear Lucy,—my letter is already enormous, but I don’t fear your criticisms.
Yours affectionately, S. L. JEX-BLAKE.”
The monotony of the life that followed was broken by one or two visits to Paris and one to Germany, and she had a great scheme of going to America to study the education of girls there. Here again, of course, she was met by the strong opposition of her Father, and again she was forced to put forward all the good and attractive points in her plan while herself profoundly convinced of its vagueness and of her own physical inadequacy. She saw a good deal at this time of Mrs. Ballantyne (afterwards Lady Jenkinson) whom she met first in Edinburgh at the house of her sister, Mrs. Burn Murdoch. This was the beginning of another lifelong friendship, most refreshing to both,—a friendship characterized almost equally by playful camaraderie and jesting, and by many long talks about the things that lie deep.
“She is just good and true and ‘clear’,” S. J.-B. had written in her diary some months before. She records how they went together to an evening Holy Communion, what they felt and said,—and goes on without a break:
“Then, again she so delicious about my bonnet (not calculated
‘To take upon it The guilt of her wandering soul’.)
The first time. I saw you in it, nearly disliked you for it—only it was past that.
Not your taste?—Then you oughtn’t to wear what isn’t,—nor to get 14s. 9d. bonnets!
Poke into omnibuses?—Poke away, but wear proper bonnets.
Tottenham Court Road?—No business to go there for bonnets.
No money?—Then you must manage very badly! [Badly!—poor generous child,—counting every halfpenny that she might have the more to give away!]
Your sister?—No, I have nothing to do with her, but I have with you. Buy proper bonnets,—then get them altered—
Whereon I vowed that if she didn’t come to London and choose one, I’d buy the ugliest in Tottenham Court Road.
My compliments to Mrs. Heath, and she oughtn’t to compromise her taste by letting you buy such bonnets, etc., etc.
So very very refreshingly, and with such bright arch eyes.”
It was certainly no lack of appreciation in the ordinary relationships of life that urged S. J.-B. to find her vocation. There are many indications of her popularity at this time among cousins and friends.
“DEAREST SOPHY,” writes the mistress of Honing Hall,—“It will be delightful to see you here. How often have I said to myself lately (having no one else to address my remarks to,—your Uncle being entirely taken up with his harvest, and more bothered than ever by it). ‘I do wish Sophy would offer her company for a few days.’
So, well pleased was I to see your handwriting this morning. I can meet you anywhere within reasonable distance. On Thursdays I have only your old friend, Little Grey, and on Tuesday, 30th., some of the Catfield people are coming over. Should you be here then, it would be an additional pleasure to all.”
And here is a characteristic note:
“DEAR MISS BLAKE,
... Pray bring back from America a few more such good stories as you told me yesterday. I say this not ‘hoping I should see your face no more’.
Yours very truly, FRANCES P. COBBE.”
On November 11th S. J.-B. received a letter that pleased her much from the Revd. T. D. C. Morse, rector of Stretford, Manchester:
“MADAM,
I have had some correspondence with Professor Plumptre of Queen’s College about establishing a Ladies’ College in this locality, and he has referred me to you as likely to help me in this good work. Notwithstanding the fact that the movement for the improvement of female education has now been for some time set on foot, this populous neighbourhood is still very destitute in this respect. I have two girls, 12 and 13 years of age, and after making enquiries in very competent quarters, I have been told that there is only one Ladies’ School ‘worth a farthing’ in or near Manchester, and that is the Ladies’ College on the north side of the city at Higher Broughton. We are living on the south side and are surrounded by a large number of wealthy people who must necessarily miss such educational facilities. I wish therefore to try whether a good Ladies’ College can be founded on this side of Manchester, and I would be glad to know whether you could introduce me to a lady qualified to act as Principal of such an Institution. Mr. Plumptre was not quite sure whether you might be disposed to undertake such a work yourself or not, but, if you were so, I feel sure from what he has told me that the matter could not be in better hands.... You will understand, of course, that the matter at present is only in the phase of a project.”
“Plum, I owe thee one!” is S. J.-B.’s irreverent comment,—“good old Plum!”
“Such a real ‘call’ it sounds—and what a field to learn in!... Now America seems put in the background with a vengeance.”
She plunged at once into plans and arrangements, timetables, lists of tutors, etc., and on November 17th she writes in her diary:
“On Tuesday and today received letters from Mr. Morse, telling me of the Bishop’s support, and thus answering my question ... asking me for ‘any suggestions’. I feel little more is to be done without an interview, but write somewhat on essential heads ‘with great diffidence’:
I am sure that no one can give their really best work to any scheme which does not stand on foundation principles with which they are in sympathy, and, bearing in mind the proposition you hinted at in your first letter, I am bound both for your sake and for my own to ascertain as far as possible how far the harmony of our views would allow me to be a really efficient worker in your cause. I have a great belief in the superiority of rule by Law over that of individual will, and should as Director of any such College be very anxious to have as little as possible left to my own choice and judgment; but, having once been able to acquiesce in the spirit of established regulations, would deem it essential to have absolute authority to see them carried out alike by teachers and pupils. I am sure that to have such questions ill-defined at first is one of the most fruitful sources of after disturbance and failure in a college....
I believe that really good women teachers are more able to measure the power of a girl’s mind, and force her to do a certain amount of good work than men, who are in my experience very apt to let young pupils slip between their fingers, as it were.
At the same time, after a thorough groundwork has been laid, I think first-rate lecturers (almost useless till then) become quite invaluable.
Meaning—I want an interview.
“Dec. 1st. 1864. Reached Manchester yesterday. Staying now with the Morses.
Capital man he,—clear, energetic and practical; a little ‘trammelled’ by clerical bonds, but in the main wide and satisfactory.
Spite of the double assurance of Minnie and Ruth that I need not talk of my Unitarianism,—I could not be quite silent, and so tonight, naturally enough, and I think truthfully, gave in my half-declaration.
Mr. Morse said (in answer to my question whether we might not be ‘too episcopal’) that, without wishing to exclude any, he wished to have the College decidedly of Church origin, and should be sorry to have other than Church main workers.
I said, ‘Then perhaps you had better not have me.’
‘But do you not belong to the Church?’
‘Well, I was baptized and confirmed in it.’
‘But you go there rather than Chapel?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I go there pretty often. I go where helps me most.’
‘Where else?’
‘Oh, mainly Unitarian’, adding ‘I have not, however, any intention of joining the Unitarians, but they have helped me’, and, in answer to a farther remark ‘that I ought to make up my mind clearly black or white’.
‘That I can’t do.... However on the whole, though very unorthodox, I believe I am on the whole most of a Churchwoman, and certainly non- proselytizing, nor, I believe in the least likely to originate any religious difficulty.’
Still he was evidently ‘stumped’, and I daresay I shall hear more of it.
Yet, on the whole, feeling as I do, I cannot regret speaking.
‘Be true to every honest thought And as thy thought thy speech.’[35]
Footnote 35:
Mr. Morse had unwittingly given her some encouragement previously by telling the story of a candidate for Orders, who when asked “If any man broached before you doubts of the divinity of our Lord (‘and I needn’t tell you,’ said Mr. Morse to S. J.-B., ‘what a difficult subject that is’) what answer would you make?”
“My Lord, I beg that you won’t suppose that I keep such company.”
“Well, but if——?”
“My Lord, I should take up my hat and walk out.”
“(Prudent too),” comments S. J.-B.
She visited the Principal of Owens’ College, however, and the Headmaster of the Grammar School, drew up a tentative list of names for Council, and had a long talk with Mrs. Gaskell, who promised to be a “Lady Visitor” if the College was founded. (“I explaining it to mean ‘right to visit’.”)
“As to my contumacy (it’s really that and not the heresy!), W. and G. to be consulted. I said how I wished him to do only what he thought right,—yet believing they would be wise to have me(!)
I think he surely wishes it, and, as I should guess he would find his consultees not otherwise inclined, a very small push would decide him that way.
(Stories,—‘The fool hath said in his heart,’ etc. Old sexton loq. ‘I can’t but think, sir, there is a God after all’).”
“Dec. 4th. Came to Rugby last night. The music in chapel again and again bringing me well-nigh to tears,—so weak and thin is one worn.
(Yet should surely notice the good Miss Garrett’s medicine does me— taken about a fortnight now.)...
And how the conviction came (when first this Manchester scheme) ‘Yes,— “be thou but fit for the wall, and thou shalt not be left in the way.” It is true!...
Is Minnie far wrong in her ‘Men have the best of it’? Easiest,—yes!—
Fancy the pleasure of going through School,—College,—returning hallmarked, for good happy well-paid work here.
Yet is the easiest ‘Best’?
Must there not be pioneers?—can their work be easy?
Yet is there not (in many tongues and roads) a ‘noble army of martyrs’?
Shall we like Erasmus ‘not aspire to that honour’?
But, oh, dear, when the heart’s light and brain clear and life sunny, it’s easy to ‘scorn delights’ (having plenty of the reallest) but when the ‘laborious days’ fail and only weary and dim ones remain—when the tunnel narrows and darkens, and nearly all the light and strength seems to have leaked out—
Then—?
‘My Grace is sufficient for thee’. No other help,—‘none other fighteth for us’—and what need?—‘Only Thou, O God.’”
How little her friends could guess the attitude of her mind may be gathered from the entry that follows:
“Dec. 5th. M.’s and my mutual objection to family prayers evidenced by staying out tonight. Justified?
I say, prayer continual and interjectional rather than formal and obligatory.
But follow out logically? Public worship, etc.”
Meanwhile she was hard at work, drawing up schemes for the proposed College, visiting schools and colleges for men, and striving to fit herself for the new work. Mr. Morse must have felt that Mr. Plumptre had recommended a worker of remarkable talents, fine sincerity and most unusual enthusiasm, one whose knowledge of life and of the world was far in advance of what might have been expected from her years. Such qualities have to be paid for, of course. Nature has a rather staggering way of throwing in counterbalancing asperities, and, when S. J.-B. proposed to foster a religious spirit in the college without the formality of daily prayers, he must have begun to realize the inflexibility of the person he was dealing with. He would probably have sympathized with the dictum of Cousin Ellie,—“I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration”!
All we actually know is that he showed no indication of wishing to draw back; and at least one public meeting in support of the scheme was duly held and reported at length in the local papers. Public opinion, however, on the subject, needed more fundamental education than Mr. Morse had allowed for, and—although S. J.-B.’s budget was characterized by the splendid economy that was one of her most striking talents—the project failed for want of adequate financial support.
“Feb. 22nd. Manchester scheme obiit. R.I.P.! I must be really in a bad way to be able to find so few mental tears for this! It does practically close up my foreground again. Heu mihi! Why mayn’t useless people be smothered out of the way if there’s no possibility of being or doing or having?
‘Because you’ve got to learn’, as that good Miss Harry said last night.”
In the midst of these varied personal interests, S. J.-B. did not lose touch with her old girls at Queen’s College. Indeed, when one realizes the intensity of her own experiences, it is rather refreshing to see how whole-heartedly she could enter into those of others.
“Feb. 23rd. 1864. Brighton.
MY DEAR LUCY,
I feel rather guilty in not having written to you before this, but I do not think that you will attribute the omission to any want of interest in one of my dear old ‘children’.... I have to send you my hearty congratulations and good wishes for the life that seems opening so happily before you. Happiness is a wonderfully solemn thing,—a thing to go down on one’s knees and thank God for....
‘So pray they, bowed with sorrow down,— While we whom love and gladness crown Bend lower yet in prayer; With hearts so full we need to pray, “Oh, make us worthy, Lord, alway, This weight of love to bear....”’
Don’t be too self-distrustful, dear child,—I don’t believe that you are at all ‘unfit to be a help to anyone’.... Send me as long a letter as your indolence will admit of, and tell me all about your prospects, and whether your engagement is likely to be a short or long one.”
“Dec. 13th. 1864.
... Having heard from E. B. of your marriage last month, I was not quite so bewildered as I might have been at receiving an epistle from a certain mysterious ‘Lucy Unwin’—
... I am so glad to hear of your being so happy, dear child (dear me, I suppose I ought to be more respectful to so venerable a matron!) I daresay if I heard the other side of the question it would not be so full of wailings over your incompetencies general and particular as yours is.... I should like exceedingly to see you in your new sphere ... and please thank your husband very much for taking me so much on trust as to want to see me,—though perhaps, after all, the real compliment is to you! It will be a great pleasure for me to come to you for a few days when I am next in the North.”
[Received May 10th, 1865.]
I had hoped to pay you a visit before this, and I am afraid you will be disappointed as well as myself when I tell you it must now, I fear, be indefinitely deferred, for circumstances have made me decide rather hurriedly to pay a long-planned visit to America for the purpose of learning something about the schools and colleges there.
I am to start from Liverpool on Saturday the 27th., and am going to take with me a girl whom you will perhaps hardly remember at Qu: College:—indeed I think she was after your time,—Isabel Bain.
“May 14th., 1865.
DEAR LUCY,
I should like exceedingly to see you if it were possible before sailing for America, and your letter has made me wish more than ever to do so.
If I found it just possible to come to you for one day and night, would you think it worth while to have me? I do not know what the possibilities are,—are you in the town?—or would it be an undertaking to get to you from the station? Would it upset you all terribly if I came and went at unearthly hours as I might have to do?
I should like to see you exceedingly, and I should like very much to see your husband,—if my coming in such a rush and making such a fuss wouldn’t make him hate me.
Thank you very much for your photograph. There are no decent ones of me, but I will see if I can find you up one of the least bad.”
The visit was paid in due course, and proved successful in every way. Mr. Unwin frankly shared his wife’s admiration for the character and gifts of her old college friend, and this was by no means the last visit she paid to their Yorkshire home.
* * * * *
In the meantime S. J.-B. had carried out another idea that had been simmering in her mind for long. It may be remembered how in her childhood she had “bought tracts (for 6d) with Carry,” and had even, apparently, been encouraged by her Father to give them away. The distribution of evangelical tracts was a great feature of the religious world in which she had been brought up, and, with the hopefulness of youth, she felt how much good might be done by circulating helpful religious pamphlets of a non-doctrinal kind. As a first step towards the realization of this scheme, she herself wrote three tracts,[36] and had them printed at her own expense. The most remarkable thing about them—in view of the writer’s youth—is their non-controversial spirit. A Father of the Church could not have written more simply. With proper machinery for distribution they might have met with some considerable success: as it was the poor little booklets crept timidly into the world only to be pronounced sadly wanting in essentials by most of those who read them.
Footnote 36:
Appendix B.
“Very harmless, but very useless,” said Mrs. Jex-Blake, and she at least knew enough of tracts to be an authority on the subject. She had evaded reading these as long as possible, and, of course it was not to the dearly-loved writer of them that she made the crushing comment.
The Guardian, strangely enough, reviewed them rather favourably, and a few total strangers wrote to say that this was the thing for which they had long been looking; but on the whole appreciation was rare.
“Frankly, I call them Cobbe and water,” said Mr. Morse.
For the Kingdom of Heaven is a treasure hid in a field, and S. J.-B. never realized how few can avail themselves of the treasure without first buying the field.
XIII. A VISIT TO SOME AMERICAN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES
“I have such a feeling that with the new world, a new life will open.”
So S. J.-B. had written in October 1864, and, seven months later, she sailed for Boston. This crossing of the Atlantic was another considerable venture for the young woman of those days; and, although S. J.-B. took with her a number of introductions, she knew no one on the other side. She was fortunate, however, in her travelling companion, Miss Isabel Bain (now Mrs. James Brander, H.M. Inspectress of Schools for Madras, retired), a young girl of exceptional charm and promise, in whose education S. J.-B. and her parents had taken a deep and active interest.
It is scarcely necessary to say that both Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake regarded the new enterprise with profound misgiving: a few days before the parting Mrs. Jex-Blake had written to Mrs. Ballantyne:
“I was so sadly selfish and engrossed about America the few hours you were here, that I must write a line to tell you how grateful I feel for all your kindness to Sophy, and how thankful I am that she has such a friend to consult with in this hour of need. I hope you did not suffer for the way in which you were plagued here: it really was very hard: though I quite believe you don’t think so.
Tuesday. Sophy’s letter has just come, and I do indeed need your prayers and sympathy. The wrench it is to me to have her go is indescribable, but I hope and believe my view will be more reasonable as time goes on. Any way, I know I shall have strength to bear. It is quite a panic, and I feel as if I must run away from it. Yet I would not prevent it if I could. I should have been very thankful for an older companion....
I ought not to plague you, her good kind friend.
May God bless you and all dear to you.
Yours affectionately, M. E. J.-B.
I hope to write you a less selfish letter another time. I am hardly myself now. Is it not curious,—I have such a prejudice against Americans that I hardly ever will read a book describing American manners. I hate descriptions of low life.”
Surely the frequent twinkle was returning to her eye when she wrote the closing words of the postscript? In any case there is no doubt about it a short time later when a question arose about Miss Bain’s leaving S. J.-B. and becoming a student in one of the colleges they had visited together:
“I think Daddy has a terror of only your bleached bones(!) being found, if you went about without a companion.”
The two girls left Liverpool on May 27th, and, after experiencing some rough weather which confined them to their berths, they staggered gallantly up on deck to enjoy the voyage and to make the acquaintance of their fellow-passengers. “A very nice Scotch Independent, Dr. Raleigh of Canonbury,” is specially noted.
The great excitement of the voyage is described in a letter to her Mother:
“After I had done writing to you, we were summoned by a cry of ‘Icebergs!’ and up we ran to see a bright white light on the horizon, just visible, right on our track. Soon another came in sight and it was really grand the next hour. The evening hardly beginning to close in, but the cold intense, yet so beautiful.... On went the ship, tearing on to the icebergs, that grew whiter and larger every minute,— great cliffs of white rearing themselves out of the waves that beat into spray at their base,—looking so strong and grim and beautiful.”
On June 8th the Africa reached Boston about midnight, and next morning the two young women went on shore to begin the new life. The weather was very warm and most of the people to whom they had introductions were out of town. The travellers suffered a good deal from the heat and from various minor inconveniences due mainly to the strangeness and expensiveness of life in general; but S. J.-B. does not fail to put on record how much they enjoyed the ice-cream!
Dr. Lucy Sewall was at her post, but Mrs. Peter Taylor, in providing this introduction had given the wrong address, and it was a couple of days before they succeeded in finding her. The meeting was destined to be full of significance in determining S. J.-B.’s future career.
It was an interesting moment in which to visit the States. The war was over, but feeling still ran high, and, although the travellers met with much kindness and hospitality, they were not a little surprised to find themselves in an atmosphere of deep resentment against England.
“Oh, dear, How they turned on the tap, and talked right on end when they got near politics, only pausing to wonder at our ‘ignorance’ in England (that being, of course, the only source of difference of opinion with them). Finally, after listening with the utmost patience indefinitely—only devoutly wishing to kick over the table—I got mentally [sic] collared by Miss Peabody with an accusation of being ‘still incredulous’, to which I replied very frankly, that ‘certainly till I heard both sides I could form no definite opinion.’
Emerson was refreshing after the rest, inasmuch as, after speaking, he would allow you to answer.... A Miss Elizabeth Hoar told me she had seen Carlyle in London in 1862, and that he had said to her,—‘So you’re quarrelling out there? Why don’t you let the Southerners go to the devil with their niggers if they like, and you go to Heaven with your virtues if you can?’ Rather sensible, I thought,—from one point of view at any rate.”
There is a pleasant little letter from Emerson, written after this meeting:
“Concord. Monday 14th June. [1865.]
DEAR MISS BLAKE,
I am sorry to be so very slow in sending you the address of Mr. Fields’ good farmer in the White Mountains region. It is Selden C. Willey, Compton Village, 6 miles from Plymouth, New Hampshire. I looked for it immediately on my return from Mrs. Mann’s, but could not find it, and now today have stumbled on it in looking for something else. Tis probable that you may have seen Mr. Fields himself before this time. When I have found my right correspondent at Oberlin, I shall hope to bring you my letter in person.
With great regard, R. W. EMERSON.
Miss Blake.”
The diary continues:
“Everyone most wonderfully kind and helpful to us personally—lots of offers of introductions, etc. That nice Dr. Sewall very anxious that I should not tire myself out and ‘get sick’. By the bye one really can converse with her, I think.”
There is a kind little note from Dr. Sewall also:
“MY DEAR MISS BLAKE,
As usual this evening I enjoyed your society so much that I forgot to say half that I wanted to....
If you call on Mr. Emerson today, I think you had better call in the afternoon, as he told me he was engaged Wednesday and Saturday forenoons.
Don’t have any neuralgia when you come to the Hospital today, or I may want to try my Electromagnetic machine on your face. I have not seen Dr. Zakrzewska yet, but I want you to come early.
Yours sincerely, LUCY C. SEWALL.”
Dr. Lucy Sewall was at this time a young woman of 28, a worthy descendant of “a long line of truly noble ancestry.”[37] She held the appointment of Resident Physician to the New England Hospital for Women and Children (an institution which had been founded in great measure through the exertions of her father, the Hon. Samuel Sewall), but there was nothing about her to suggest that she had adopted what was at that time an unusual line of life for a woman. Singularly girlish in appearance, she was and remained throughout life so gentle and womanly that, until one knew her well, her reserves of strength were a source of repeated surprise. “So simple and humble and kindly,” writes S. J.-B. at this time,—“said she ‘could not succeed in learning to think enough before she spoke about a case.’”
Footnote 37:
See inter alia Whittier’s poem, “The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, 1697.”
No wonder S. J.-B. was attracted. A warm friendship sprang up between the two young women, a friendship by means of which S. J.-B. was introduced primarily to the world of Medicine, and, secondarily, to the wide question of Feminism. She had been living, of course, in a feminist world at home, and a very choice world of its kind; but here the movement had become more explicit, its aims were clearly defined and partially realized. It had, no doubt, lost a certain amount of charm in the process, but that is the fate of all movements the world over. They too have to be worked out “in the commonplace clay with which the world provides us.”
In any case S. J.-B. was profoundly influenced by the change of atmosphere. Her conception of woman’s work and woman’s sphere began to widen out. On June 22nd she writes to her Mother:
“We saw Miss Crocker the other day,—late Mathematical professor at Antioch,—and she impressed me extremely with her quiet dignity and wisdom, and her tremendous Mathematics,—I should so like to study under her some day. I felt like an uppish dwarf beside some strong quiet giant.”
And a few days later:
“By the way that wonderful astronomer, Maria Mitchell, whom I told you we were going to see, is a very nice woman—grand and able and strong and kindly.... She is to be a professor at Poughkeepsie, and, if we go there, I shall certainly hope to learn of her,—though I did not know that Astronomy would ever have come into my life. Any way it will be a great pleasure to know such a woman.”
On the same day she records in her diary:
“Sat for a couple of hours in Dr. Sewall’s dispensary this morning. Some 36 cases heard and helped more or less. Some coming with bright faces,—‘So much better, Doctor,’—some in pain enough, poor souls. Dr. Sewall with such a kindly ready sympathy, and such clear firm treatment for them all. Certainly the right woman in the right place, except in as far as she herself gets to look sadly fagged and tired sometimes.”
The state of S. J.-B.’s own health continued very unsatisfactory. “What is one to do,” she says, “when one has alternate days of ‘feeling like a tallow candle,’ and days of feeling rather grand and energetic, like yesterday, when my ‘book’ was begun with a bounce?” After watching her for some weeks, Dr. Sewall pronounced her “worn out in mind and body,” and advised a holiday among the hills until the excessive heat was over. So she paid a delightful visit to Professor and Mrs. Rogers at Lunenburg, and then went on to West Compton near the White Mountains. “The railway (a single line) cut through delicious woods with no fence or wall, just through the wildest glades full of ferns and pyrolas,— vistas of sun on fir and maple boles,—then again by the side of one lovely lake after another, a perfect prodigality of beauty.”
“Aug. 18th 1865. West Compton.
DARLING MOTHER,—I don’t think I shall be able to write by the next mail, as we are going for a few days’ excursion round the mountains, so I must send you off now as long a letter as I can manage, telling you what we have been doing just lately.
First and foremost, I have been coming in useful as ‘teamster’, in Yankee parlance, having been chiefly employed in driving my neighbours all about the country lately. You would have laughed, I think, had you seen my ‘span’ (pair of horses) the other day,—one brown, pretty high,—the other mouse coloured and some three inches lower, the most delightful variety prevailing in the harnessing and general appearance of the two. Behind these beauties came six of us in a big rough country ‘wagon’, all of painted wood,—two big seats fixed in a sort of open cart.
We went through such a ford,—the Penningewassett River, and (when the horses didn’t bite each other) we got on grandly....”
“You haven’t the least idea what that word ‘woods’ means,—in England there are just a few acres of carefully preserved trees and ‘no trespassers allowed’. Here you plunge into a vast forest, miles and miles every way,—lucky if you can find a path at all, else guiding yourself by sun and stream and taking hours and hours to get a mile or two,—yet all through so grand, so green, and so delicious! If you could just have been with us yesterday! Every few minutes we found some great tree fallen across our path, or some black bog of decayed cedar or pine,—oh, the scents of those!—perfectly delicious;—and then round we had to go, creeping, jumping or gliding round the obstruction. Then we would come to some little clearing, and catch such views of the mountains we were shut in with,—then on again and hardly see daylight through the dense trees. And such mosses, such ferns, such berries!
Then over the river somehow from rock to rock, and such a scramble up among the cascades which came leaping down like liquid silver in the sunlight, and such pools we did so want to bathe in, and had to [refrain] for lack of time and towels! They called the distance 2½ or 3 miles, but we took just 3 hours to get there,—and then coming back pretty sharply in about half the time. The only grief to me was—what perhaps you will hardly sympathize in—that we didn’t come across any bear. There are a good many left in the woods and one hears every now and then of their being met, but they are getting few, and they are proportionately timid and modest, running off full speed if they see you. Wouldn’t it have been fun to see one?...
I think hardly anything strikes an Englisher more than the no-value of wood here. Over the water it’s half high treason to hurt a tree;—here, if you want a napkin-ring, you strip the bark off the first birch you come to and make a lot; or, if you take it into your head, set fire to the woods anywhere and have a bonfire of a dozen trees, and no one says a word. We have seen woods on fire over and over again, and no one says more than,—‘Oh, somebody’s fired the wood’; and the odd thing is it doesn’t seem to spread as one would expect.
One comes continually to clearings full of blackened stumps not yet grubbed up,—the beginning of a garden or house place perhaps. I want to see a great big forest fire some day,—and I only wish I might see a prairie on fire too; only that is said to be horribly dangerous. It is so funny to hear here, as when I was asking about a certain road (from St. Louis to California), ‘Yes, it’s the shortest, but the Indians are cross just now and have been scalping a lot of people there’!
Well, darling, we had such a drive home by starlight last night, and all enjoyed our day hugely. When we got in I suppose I walked slightly lame or something, for my greeting was,—‘I guess you’re tired, an’t you? You’re kind o’ waggling’!”
One is quite sorry to see the Boston postmark again; but the high spirits do not flag. “You don’t know,” she writes to her Mother, “what an immense thing it is for us to have got free admission to the Woman’s Hospital life here,—we are always doing something jolly together with the students and doctors,—all women, by the way.
Dr. Sewall is resident Physician, and is always asking us to spend jolly evenings there,—or to join them in going to theatres, etc. Yesterday we made an expedition in the evening to a famous place for ice-cream, 8 of us there were—4 M.D.s (one of whom is a splendid surgeon,—the first female surgeon I have heard of) two students and we two. After the ices we went back to the Hospital, and played a most ridiculous game of cards called ‘Muggins’, keeping us in roars of laughter half the time. Then Dr. Tyng (the surgeon) sang, and, among other things gave us a specimen of the ‘Shaker’ singing—with its very peculiar religious dance,—have you heard about the Shakers? I hope to see them and then I will tell you.
But can’t you understand how refreshing it is to slip into the bright life of all these working people—working hard all day, and then so ready for fun when work’s over? It reminds me of the full colour and life of the old London times when all we working women were together.”
So she utilised every opportunity of getting information likely to help in her study of the conditions of Women’s education. She regretted in after life that her dislike of ‘lion-hunting’ had prevented her from making—or cultivating—the acquaintance of well-known people who did not seem likely to be of direct help in her work. Not that she disdained the opportunities when they actually came within reach. Here is an interesting episode in the course of her wanderings:
“Sept. 9th. Went over to Concord, Mass. by 11 a.m. train. At the station found Waldo Emerson just fetching his wife and friends. I spoke to him and he very cordially asked us to ‘take our dinner’ with him. We accepted, first paying a visit to Mrs. Horace Mann and Miss Peabody. Mrs. Mann gave me a letter to Mr. Pennel (her nephew) at St. Louis, whither I am advised to go after Oberlin and Antioch perhaps. Poughkeepsie we must visit later, by wish of the President, Dr. Raymond.
Went on to Emerson’s to dinner. Was received by one of the daughters, Ellen,—simple and kindly, the ‘housekeeper’, I should think—and shown into a room with several people.... About 3 p.m. dinner served, more English-wise than most, though with a new Irish maid for waiter, who looked anxiously to ‘Ellen’ for orders. Another daughter, Edith (about to be married) and a son, Edward. They had sherry on the table, which I have only seen at the Rogers’ besides,... Pears and grapes,—partly the queer sage grapes with tarry flavour,—on a pretty basket, large and shallow.
Mr. Emerson struck me as having one of the sweetest expressions I have ever seen on a man’s mouth. He was very kind in offering help. We talked besides a little about Swedenborg, for whom he seemed to have some admiration. ‘To be read as one reads a poet’s ideas,—not critically,’ he said, and spoke of the pre-inspiration works on science, etc., as really valuable.
Mrs. Emerson talked a little about ‘women’s questions’, female franchise, etc.—and spoke of the wonderful blinding power of habit,—as in slavery question,—looking to Christianity in its advance to set all to rights.
I remarked that few had done more harm to the cause than St. Paul by some of his words. She replied very truly that the fault lay rather in those who would rigidly apply such words and consider them binding out of all connection of time and place.”
It was left to a later friend to point out that St. Paul showed himself in this respect the John Stuart Mill of his day when he asserted that ‘in Jesus Christ is neither male nor female.’
“Speaking a little to an old schoolfellow of Emerson’s he told me it was hard for anyone to say what Emerson’s opinions were. I said I had heard of him as a pantheist; he said at any rate he was one of the best of men and had been from boyhood up.”
A few days later she visited Niagara,—“the only ‘pleasure’ thing” she tells her Mother, “I resolved to do if possible. We hope to spend next Sunday there,—not a bad church, will it be?” From Niagara she writes to Mrs. Unwin:
“Sept. 17th. 1865. Niagara.
MY DEAR LUCY,
I congratulate you with all my heart on the birth of your little son! I think by this time you will have forgotten all doubts and difficulties, and all but pleasant feelings of responsibility, in your great content, have you not? God very seldom sends us either duties or blessings without showing us how to fulfil and enjoy and use them, and I do not doubt but you will have found in your own case all sorts of new powers and instincts develop with the need of them, and will have by this time a pretty definite idea ‘What to do with a baby’—Is it not so?...
I wish there existed a visual telegraph (if such a phrase may be coined) and that I could give you a glimpse of the scene I have in front of me, and which is continually stealing my eyes from my paper. No less than Niagara in its full glory!—and what that glory is I don’t think any but eyes can tell. I have seen a good deal of beauty and grandeur in my life, in Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, etc., but I think never anything so wonderfully, bewitchingly, grandly beautifully as this. People talk of being disappointed in Niagara, but I think it can only be because, for the first moment, the enormous width of the Falls (900 feet in one case, 2000 in the other,—separated by an island) prevents their recognizing their height as well, or else they have not got the right natures to admire with! (and I think that last is oftener the case than people think).
It gives one most wonderfully the feeling of power and immensity,—the sort of feeling that was [expressed] long ago, ‘When I consider the work of Thy fingers, what is man that Thou are mindful of him?’—and yet the feeling of infinite beauty and harmony too. Before leaving we go under the Falls, and into the ‘Cave of the Winds’ behind a vast curtain of water, and that I think must give one almost more strongly still the impression of might and vastness. It is very little use to talk about it any more, I wish you could see it!
Thank you very much for writing to my Mother about A. I hope she will get away from her present uncomfortable place,—it would give me great pleasure if she came to you. Only I warn you I shall claim her some day!
Goodbye, dear child. With all good wishes for you and yours, I am ever
Yours very sincerely, S. L. JEX-BLAKE.”
From Niagara she went via Cleveland to Oberlin, and so began the tour which she afterwards described in A Visit to some American Schools and Colleges (published by Macmillan in 1867). She had been very kindly advised by Dr. Hill, the President of Harvard, as to the Colleges best worth visiting, and the experience proved both interesting and useful. At Oberlin the two sexes were almost equally represented, and “coloured” students formed about a third of the whole number. “In the year of my visit,” she writes, “it so happened that the only woman who graduated was a coloured girl, originally a slave, who had not even then paid her full ransom to her former owners.” A considerable proportion of students of both sexes supported themselves wholly or in part by doing the domestic work of the establishment. Manners were rather rough even for the America of those days, but the standard of behaviour was high, and the religious atmosphere almost overwhelming.
From Oberlin she went on to Hillsdale, St. Louis, and Antioch (at Yellow Springs in Ohio) spending a few days or weeks at each; and afterwards she visited a number of schools. What impressed her perhaps more than anything else was the success with which the joint education of men and women was carried on, and this impression was destined to play its part in the later struggles of her life.
“If anyone asks you again about my views of comparative English and American teaching,” she writes to her Mother, “I suppose I may say that I believe on the whole American girls are more thoroughly, and especially more universally, taught fundamental things. They learn Mathematics more thoroughly, and Latin more invariably; their knowledge of modern languages is decidedly inferior (very naturally, being so far from France, Germany, etc.) and their English and their manners both less polished. But I should think a decidedly smaller number of them are able to manage to grow up quite ignorant!” It annoyed her a good deal that, in the matter of pronunciation, an American will always ask you “what dictionary you go by,” and seems quite unable to understand the unwritten law of language which in England reigns supreme, and from which, if a dictionary differs, it simply condemns itself.
Her birthday inspired a breezy letter from her brother:
“13 Sussex Square, Brighton. Jan. 21. 1866.
MY DEAR SOPHY,
Many happy returns of your 26th birthday, as they would say in Ireland: and may they ache find you younger and fresher!
We have been enjoying three very fresh but windy weeks here; and are now leaving tomorrow for Rugby. We leave Violet, Katharine and Netta here, however, as they are only half through measles....
We have ridden a good deal, been with the hounds more than usual; and not read much. Lecky on Rationalism is the best book I have read lately, of the fairly solid sort; Swinburne’s Atalanta the best new poem; Citoyenne Jacqueline the best new novel; Mr. ——’s the worst stale sermons. Is there anything good out in American literature of late? Artemus Ward is good in his line, but his line is audacious.
I should like six months in America immensely; locomotive, with introductions, I don’t know the politics of the people you are with or have been with; but I was always a Northerner.... I wonder how the Mexican business will end: and cannot pretend to guess: but I hope Louis Napoleon ... will soon withdraw his troops, and Maximilian will collapse. We are on the eve of a noisy session, I expect; Home Office stung by reform into a queer tarantula, and Colonial secretaries badgered about Jamaica by both sides of the House. I cannot pretend to judge till we get more evidence: but as yet none has turned up which in my eyes justifies the execution of Gordon—who for all that was probably deep.... Have I wearied you out with politics? or have you not read so far?
With love from us all, I am your affecte brother, T. W. JEX-BLAKE.”
She answered the letter while the stimulus of it was fresh:
“DEAR TOM,
Many thanks for your birthday letter. Though they came rather late, I got quite a budget at last.
I quite agree that you ought to come and see America,—both its people and its scenery. It’s a queer study in all ways, one finds so much to like and respect, and so much that one is inclined to laugh at. People are certainly less tied and bound by the chain of ‘on dit’, on this side the water, and that tells more for good than for evil, I think; but on the other hand it lets people who are so inclined fall into overgrown eccentricities, and set at nought to an alarming extent all rules of grammar and etiquette when they don’t suit. In fact I have not found more than three or four Americans altogether who talk what we should consider cultivated English, or behave as if they had been in what we call cultivated society. They’ll pick their teeth while they talk to you (so will the shopmen—‘store clerks’, if you please,— while they serve you) spit within an inch of you, eat things in the streets while walking with you, perhaps whistle and sing ditto; talk about what they ‘had ought to do’, say they should ‘admire to do so and so for you’ or ask if they shall ‘turn out the tea,’ etc. And all this from men who have been through College, and women who know more Mathematics, Latin, Greek and Philosophy than I dare think about. In fact there’s a very curious contrast in the much higher level of learning and the much lower level of outward signs of refinement in American as compared with English averages.
I’m afraid that while we may have some few hundreds better educated,— more ‘elegant scholars’—than any in America, we must confess that there is here a very much higher percentage of fairly well read and well educated people than with us. I notice this specially among the girls—as to the men I know less. But almost all girls here have studied a good deal things few English girls go much into—specially Mathematics and natural science.
Then I am sure no one ought to speak more highly than I of American kindness and hospitality,—I am very much afraid few foreigners would have found in England such a welcome as I met with here. People were so cordially kind in helping me in all sorts of ways.... There seems to me much less of the spirit of ‘pride of office,’ etc., much more readiness to admit one everywhere to see everything, and to be ready to help without standing too much on one’s dignity. I found this specially in the case of Dr. Hill, President of Harvard University, the first in America—and the same in the case of the presidents of the colleges for both sexes, Oberlin, Hillsdale, and Antioch.
I don’t know whether you will care for all these results of my observations, but your mention of America and wish to see it drew them out.
As to politics, I knew very little about them before I came, and had a faint sort of prejudice in favour of the South, believing the North to be very insincere about slavery, etc. I now think that the Anti- slavery cry has been used most shamelessly for private and political ends by some, but that there is at the heart of Yankeedom a strong true heart beating earnestly in favour of liberty for negroes as well as whites, and that there are and have been very many most sincerely bent on very unselfish ends, and a great deal of real patriotism (on both sides probably) evolved by the war.
I am chiefly with some of the very best of the Anti-slavery people. The Sewalls used to shelter escaped negroes when to do so was a penal offence.
I saw Lecky’s Rationalism (which ought rather to be called the History of Reasonableness) before I left England, but only read part of it. I first found it on Miss Cobbe’s table, and liked it very much. I don’t know of any great American books lately,—they pirate almost everything English.
I think the English here must be feeling pretty badly about Jamaican affairs,—I am. They say the French troops are certainly to evacuate Mexico now....
I hope Hetty got thanked for her note a little while ago,—this letter is meant as much for her as for you, though I forgot to begin it so. Love to the bairns. I suppose I shall scarcely know them when I get back.
Your aff. sister, S. L. J.-B.”