I. EARLY DAYS IN PRACTICE
The dramatic days were over. The task that now lay before S. J.-B. was to pick up all that remained of herself after the conflict, and settle down to practice. It is a solemn moment in the history of any doctor when he or she deliberately takes in hand the issues of life and death: mistakes can no more be avoided in this than in any other walk of life, and yet the consequences here are so much more apparently important.
And if it is a solemn moment for any man or woman, it was surely not less so for her who for years had been a city set on a hill. In the course of the long struggle youth had quite slipped away; her best energies were spent; her nervous system was overstrained beyond the possibility of complete recuperation. If George Eliot could say with some truth that she began Romola as a young woman and ended it an old one, how much more might S. J.-B. have said this of her education in medicine. Perhaps the coward in her would gladly now have shunned the conflict altogether.
Small say was allowed to that coward at any time, and at this juncture few even of S. J.-B.’s friends realized that—as regarded output of energy—she had already done a life’s work. No one would have been surprised if she had died a few years before, in the stress of the fight; but the human memory is short, and, as she had survived, almost everyone now looked upon the toil of the last ten years as simply the introduction to the volume. She was now expected to show how great a success a woman doctor can be.
First came the anxious question where to settle, and, while she meditated on this, she was making good, at Brompton and wherever she could find an entry,[135] the deficiencies in her hospital education.
Footnote 135:
We hear of her visiting the Middlesex, Moorfields, the Royal Free, the Cancer, and the Children’s Hospitals.
Her original plan had been to settle in London, to foster the School she had founded, and at the same time to be within easy reach of her Mother,—the Mother for whom she would at any moment in her life have thrown up every hope and plan that guided her.
There is no doubt that this would have been in most respects the ideal arrangement. There is room for everyone in London. In those days it was absolutely essential for a woman doctor to settle in a town large enough to allow for the overwhelming proportion of patients who declined to take their lives in their hands, so to speak, by trusting one of their own sex. Even if the patient herself was willing to lean her whole weight on an untried plank, husbands and mothers stood in the way. Indeed there were girls who reckoned it the prime luxury involved in earning their own living that they became free to employ the doctor of their choice—a woman.
It is true that patients—and still more their male relatives—were readier to trust S. J.-B. than they would have been to trust most other women. Her inherent motherliness was not weakened by any aggressive femininity; but on the other hand it is not to be supposed that she was any less alarming than she had been as a student. No doctor ever inspired greater enthusiasm and devotion than she did, but it was on the whole the few to whom she appealed. Her vein of tenderness lay too deep for the casual eye to see; and many were afraid of the occasional high- handed imperious ways and the disregard of what people were likely to say.
“It was like being lifted on a comet’s tail,” writes a patient to whom she had been called in an emergency in March 1878, “when you came in, strong and swift, with your eagle wings, getting over distances in a third of the time other people take to do it.”
This is admirable, and describes what many felt, but although being lifted on a comet’s tail is exactly what many patients want, the treatment is not universally applicable.
London, then, would probably have supplied S. J.-B. with a larger practice than she could have worked; many friends, and particularly her brother, were keenly anxious that she should settle there; Mr. Norton always regretted her departure; but, now that the School had been taken out of her hands, it seemed inadvisable that she should remain as a looker-on. The difficulty was to find another place big and representative enough: she dreaded the great midland towns. After much consultation, she decided on the last place on earth she might have been expected to choose,—on Edinburgh.
It was partly the bracing climate, partly the beautiful drives, partly the many friends who had stood by her so gallantly, that led to this spirited decision, but on the whole it was a mistake. The smoke of the conflict was still hot, and some of those who had admired her most had admired her for qualities which were not what they sought in a physician.
Moreover, she was the last person on earth to play up to the expectations of the community in which she lived. The Edinburgh of those days was a more conventional place than Edinburgh is now, and doctors above all were expected to conform to a particular standard. There was a general impression that piety paid and that an interest in missions was a great help to success in practice.
“You never will succeed unless you conform to these usages,” said a friend: “You might have Edinburgh at your feet if you would go to church regularly and show yourself a religious woman,” said another.
It is needless to say that these were not the arguments to use with S. J.-B. Never, moreover, since the far-off school-days in which she had given a highly-valued shilling to “the Jews” had she taken any interest in missions. That vein in her was worked out, or transmuted into something else. The more she read of the old religions—and she did read— the more she found in them to admire and respect,—the more it seemed to her that they were the fitting medium for the training of the people to whom they had been given. It must be frankly admitted too that she continued to see such questions in the atmosphere of the particular Evangelical school in which she had been brought up; in recognizing the evolution of the individual—of herself as an individual—she failed to recognize the evolution of the medium; and her life was so full of active beneficent interests as to leave scant time for the consideration of questions that did not at first sight appeal to her,—that did not seem to be her job.
In the Edinburgh, too, of those days, the ordinary people who “counted” were the people who liked things done “just so.” It disturbed their sense of the fitting, for instance, that S. J.-B. should pay professional visits, driving herself in a pony phaeton. Altogether she was too big, too untrammeled for the post. What was wanted was the woman who is a credit to any cause she may adopt. There are plenty of them now-a-days.
Finally, S. J.-B. realized from the first that, with her limited physical resources, she could not combine a social with a professional life. Hospitality is a poor word to describe the manner in which her door stood open to the few she loved, to those whom she thought she could help, to all in whom she recognized any sort of spiritual kinship; but from ordinary social engagements she stood aloof. She refused invitations to dinner,[136] or made excuse to leave so early that she might better, perhaps, not have gone; she declined to be lionised in any way; and she was apt to snub those whom she suspected of wishing to know her from motives of curiosity.
Footnote 136:
For the same reason she went but seldom to the theatre, unless an actor whom she greatly admired visited Edinburgh. When Henry Irving was there she would go as often as three times a week, and usually take a little party of friends. Louis XI. was, in her opinion, his masterpiece. For Miss Terry she had, like all the rest of the world, a great admiration. Of Ristori she used to speak almost with bated breath.
We must not forget how different she could be from all this,—how radiant, how sympathetic, how full of humour and fun. “What a comfort it is,” writes a patient at this time, “to see your dear supporting face!” “You always come as Hercules did to Alcestis,” writes another. “Emily and I have often spoken of your ‘How are you?’ being like his, ‘I am here to help.’”
Nor am I working up to the avowal that she was a professional failure: she was not: in many ways she was a great success. But if Edinburgh—like Cousin Ellie of old—could have made “even a slight alteration” in her, she might almost indeed have had the town at her feet.
* * * * *
She took the house 4 Manor Place, and in June 1878 she put her plate on the door and began. Three months later she started a small dispensary. Her professional isolation was great: Dr. Pechey was at Leeds; the other medical women were in London or farther afield. A doctor in the early days is sorely handicapped if he cannot discuss difficult cases and questions with his contemporaries and seniors. S. J.-B. never had, except for a few days at a time, the daily chit-chat—what students call the “shop”—that is so helpful; but she was not allowed to suffer. Dr. Heron Watson, Dr. George Balfour, and Dr. Angus Macdonald supported her with a chivalrous loyalty of which it is difficult to write calmly even now. They encouraged her to appeal to them at any time: they put the whole wealth of their learning and experience at her disposal; and—what was not a matter of course in those days—there was not a single question in all the complicated domain of medicine which they would not discuss with her as frankly as if she had been a man. It must be borne in mind that in her own special subject, the diseases of women, her equipment was all that could be desired. It was not for nothing that she had worked for two years under Dr. Sewall at Boston. If adequate training had been available, she might have made a great gynæcological surgeon, for she had great calmness and presence of mind in an emergency, and her hands, though full of character, were small and deft. Dr. Sewall always regretted the waste of her potentiality in this respect.
The following extracts are from letters written during the first few months of practice:
To her Mother,
“MY DARLING,
I know you will be pleased to hear that I yesterday received fees which just completed my first £50,—earned in Edinburgh in less than three months,—and that in what they call the “empty” season. And what pleases me still better is that everyone of my patients has done well. Several have left my hands practically recovered, and those who are still there are all going on satisfactorily. And as among them were two cases to which I was called when the patient was described as ‘dying’ (and both got well) I think I may very well be content. I have had 23 patients (nearly 100 visits) at my private house, and about as many more at my Dispensary, which has only been open a fortnight; so I don’t think there is much doubt about the ‘demand’ nor about my prospects.”
To Dr. King Chambers,
“I feel I am learning a great deal from the large variety of practice here. You will see from the enclosed paper that I have the help and support of four[137] of the best medical men in Edinburgh, and they are all excessively kind in giving me advice and help as often as I want it. No one ever had better friends and I doubt if anyone ever liked a profession better than I like mine.
I find that each of my cases involves so much reading and thinking that I am almost anxious they should not multiply too fast.”
Footnote 137:
The three mentioned above, together with Dr. Peel Ritchie. In later years, of course, she would have added to the list,—notably the names of Dr. (Sir Thomas) Clouston and Mr. C. W. Cathcart.
To Dr. (now Sir Thomas) Barlow to whom she had commended a young colleague,
“March 24th. [1879.]
DEAR SIR,
I thank you very much for the kind response to my note which reached me this morning. I feel sure that you will find Miss K. grateful for your kindness and most anxious to benefit by it. I have had repeated cause myself in my own Dispensary work to be thankful for the various lessons I learned from you and Dr. Lee.
Thank you also for the kind interest you express in my personal success, which indeed is all that I could desire. I have about 25 or 30 patients at the Dispensary every day that it is opened, and I also have a much larger private practice than is usual at so early a date. I have not yet been established here in practice quite 9 months, and I find that I have already had about 400 visits to or from private patients, which I think you will allow shows the ‘demand’ is a real one.
As you refer to the ‘general question of lady doctors’ you must allow me to say that I am quite sure it would have your support, from at any rate one point of view, if you had the least idea of the amount of preventible suffering which women bear with rather than consult men in special cases....
Now I do not care for a moment to argue whether this feeling is right or wrong; ... if the feeling exists it should be distinctly recognized as an element in the question; and I am quite sure that you would be one of the very first to desire that every possible remedy should be brought to such needless suffering.
In the same way I never care to argue at all about the relative capabilities of men and women. I mean to try to do my own work up to the very best of my power, and that is all that really concerns me. I cannot imagine any work nobler or more perfectly fascinating, than that of medicine, and I am very thankful to be allowed ever so small a share in it.”
To Mrs. Henry Kingsley,
“I have full as much work at my Dispensary as I can manage, indeed I am pretty well used up on those days, but I always enjoy them.
I am just going to begin a course of lectures which I hope may be successful.
It is hard work altogether, but nothing to the old worries.”
Hard work indeed it was, especially when one bears in mind that she was urged at times to undertake confinements at a very considerable distance,—as far off as Yorkshire. Moreover, being a woman, she had of course the cares of housekeeping, and S. J.-B. always took her housekeeping very seriously.[138] She was herself a good cook and an excellent manager, and her staff were expected to carry out her methods and principles loyally. If they happened to be lazy and unprincipled, or even easy-going, their tenure of office was likely to be brief. Her comfortable home—in common with all the other gifts of the gods—meant nothing to her unless she could share it. How heartfelt was her hospitality may be gathered from the following letters:
“August 15th. [? 1878.]
DEAR MISS IRBY,
Welcome home again! I saw in yesterday’s paper that you had reached England, and was going to write when your letter came. I shall be delighted to see you again! I expect to be here all autumn and winter (with the exception of a few days) and shall be only too glad to have you whenever you like best to come. Only do manage to give me at least a week, and let me know which time suits you best as soon as possible, so that I may make my plans suit yours.
Several people are most anxious to meet you, so I will ask them to dinner, etc., when you fix a time; but I hope you won’t accept invitations much (you are sure to have dozens) as I do want you to get a little rest while with me, and I want to take you drives about Edinburgh,—the country is so lovely. I shall tell everybody you will be too tired to go out much.
Would you like a public meeting here? I daresay it would help, though most residents are away at this season.
Yours affectionately, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
Footnote 138:
The invaluable Alice had retired from service to join a sister in Wales. She and her mistress continued to correspond till the end.
“June 16th. [1879.]
DEAR MRS. THORNE,
I hear that your two girls are coming to Morton next week. Don’t you think it would be very wrong to let them travel so far all alone? Don’t you think it is clearly your duty to come and stay a week or two with me when you arrive? I should like so very much to see you again at something like leisure, and also to show you my Dispensary and all and sundry I am doing here. So many Edinbro’ friends would like to see you! Do try to come if only for a week or two!
I remember that the ‘wonderful woman’ went to London and back for 24 hours once, so she can’t mind travelling! In haste
Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
“June 18th.
DEAR MRS. THORNE,
I shall be really delighted if you will come down with your girls and spend a week or two with me while they are at Morton. You and I have never had any really quiet time together since our student days, and I cannot tell you how much I should enjoy some talks with you, and how glad I should be of your advice about lots of things in my Dispensary and otherwise. Dr. Sewall you know always said you were the doctor among us, and I quite believe it. I wish so very often that I could ask you about things.”
To a colleague in London she writes a month or two later:
“Your thanking me so much for a very moderate amount of good nature shown to Miss X., makes me wonder how you expect one to behave to people who are ill and poor. I am sure you yourself act upon the ‘aux plus déshérités le plus amour’ principle? Seriously I have done very little for her beyond what I should have done for anybody more or less in her position, except perhaps half a dozen drives and dinners which I promised ‘pour l’amour de vos beaux yeux' before I saw her.
I am afraid you must think me a very ungrateful person in my turn, for I don’t say a quarter as much about your various kindnesses to me and my friends.”
She always had a word of brave and wise advice for colleagues who appealed to her:
“I am inclined to think you had better send Miss Z. off to Australia. I am sure Miss Du Pre will gladly do her part if you write to her about it. She is now at ‘Surbiton, S.W.,’—no farther address required.
I think you are quite wrong to think you will ‘not forgive yourself’ if the plan does not succeed. I have long ago come to the conclusion that ‘efforts are ours, results are God’s,’—and, if you don’t like that phraseology, you can paraphrase it as you like, so long as you acquiesce in my conclusion that we are not to blame or worry ourselves if things go wrong when we have done our best.
How I wish we could sit by that upstairs window and have a chat over it all!”
* * * * *
“No, life isn’t a bit of a failure, and you wouldn’t think so if we could get ten days’ holiday together up in the highlands!—don’t I wish we could!—for I am very tired too.
I’ve got to go off to Yorkshire in a few days to attend ——’s patient....
My coachman got drunk last week, and I turned him off at an hour’s notice, and had to see to the stable myself for a day or two!—My whole household has been upside down, and in the midst of it my dear old Turk died last week, but quite quietly and without pain. I have a new page, and a new cook, and a new groom,[139] and am going to have a new housemaid,—don’t you pity me?—Still I say ‘Life is good,’—Can you have better testimony?”
Footnote 139:
In place of the “coachman”; she never had both.
Her advice on occasion could be fairly drastic:
“Yes,—I know about Miss W. Why do you let her stay 1½ hours with you? At the end of five minutes I should take out my watch and say,— ‘Now I have just ten minutes more for you,—is there anything you want to say?’ That’s the way to treat those sort of folks. I am not ‘too good for this world.’”
Here is a rather amusing answer to a question from Dr. Pechey,—“Why do you recommend Vermouth?”
“DEAR EDIE,
I sent off my two cards to you too hurriedly to answer about ‘Vermouth’!—but now let me say at my leisure that I never heard anything more beautifully illustrative of the way stories are ‘evolved.’
The one and only occasion when I made acquaintance with Vermouth was when one day, during a hurried call at Mrs. Nichol’s, the dear old lady in Mr. F.’s presence, offered me some Vermouth as something new she had got, and insisted on my tasting it,—which I did, and said I thought it ‘very nice,’ as in duty bound! Neither before nor afterwards have I either seen or heard of it! It really is nice, I think,—in the orange bitters line,—but further I know nothing about it, and certainly never recommended it in my life—nor expect to.
My professional life is, I find, largely a crusade against tea and alcohol, so certainly I am not likely to preach up new liqueurs—if this is one.”
To Dr. Sewall she writes,
“Oct. 8th. [1879.] ... I have a very charming little brougham, which my Mother gave me; and a beautiful horse, quiet as a lamb and strong as a bull, from Miss Du Pre. Altogether it is an extremely smart turn- out, and I should like so much to show it to you! I hope I shall this summer. You must come then if possible,—it is so hard to be apart so many years!
I am so sorry my Father’s carriage is worn out. That little gift was such a pleasure to him and almost the last thing he did. I think the letter in which he told me he had paid the money to my bankers was the very last I had from him—dear old man!...
Dr. King Chambers gave the inaugural address at our School this year, I moved the vote of thanks to him,[140] as it was my one day in London. I will try to send you a report.”
Footnote 140:
This was probably not the occasion of which she writes in her diary,—“S. J.-B. made very nice speech in moving vote of thanks,—only forgot to thank much!”
Later she writes,
“I have rather a sore heart today, for dear old Turk has just died in my arms.... He seemed about as usual today, but rose from where he was by the kitchen fire, walked into the scullery and fell over. They fetched me, and he gave just two gasps in my arms and died. It seems a bit of one’s life gone, when he had been in it for 13 years!—and a Boston bit too.”
“Nov. 29th. 1879.... We are in great excitement here with the visit of Gladstone to Edinburgh,[141] and his speeches. I send you two papers today, to show you how he alludes in one speech to the sympathy of women with his cause,—I have written a short letter in today’s Scotsman asking if it would not be better that they should be able legitimately to express that sympathy through the Suffrage.... How I hope and trust to see you here next year!”
Footnote 141:
This was the celebrated visit to contest the County of Midlothian,—a “triumphal procession”!
Apparently Miss Pechey did not think Gladstone’s appreciation of women sufficiently adequate to be worth acknowledging, for a few days later S. J.-B. writes to her,
“I like Gladstone much better than you do, or I shouldn’t have written as in the Scotsman, but no doubt he is wrong about women,—his wife’s fault however, I fancy. Miss Irby went to stay with them for a day or two last year, and I know he admires her hugely,—perhaps she may be a means of grace to him.”
It was about this time that the opinions of a number of representative women were collected on the subject of the Suffrage. S. J.-B. at first declined to respond, but, on Miss Irby’s remonstrance she wrote the following lines, which are quoted here because they represent fairly the calm and decided attitude she took upon the subject throughout life:
“If I correctly understand the British Constitution, one of its fundamental principles is that Taxation and Representation should go together, and that every person taxed should have a voice in the election of those by whom taxes are imposed. If this is a wrong principle, it should be exchanged as soon as possible for some other, so that we may know what is the real basis of representation in this country; if it is a right principle, it must admit of general application, and I am unable to see that the sex of the tax-paying householder should enter into the question at all.
The argument respecting the ‘virtual representation’ of women under the present system seems to me especially worthless, as it can be answered alternatively thus:—If women as a sex have exactly the same interests as men, their votes can do no harm, and indeed will not affect the ultimate result; if they have interests more or less divergent from men, it is obviously essential that such interests should be directly represented in the councils of the nation. My own belief is that in the highest sense, the interests of the two sexes are identical, and that the noblest and most enlightened men and women will always feel them to be so; and, in that case, a country must surely be most politically healthy where all phases of thought and experience find legitimate expression in the selection of its parliamentary representatives.”
As regards the medical education of women S. J.-B. never for one moment lost interest in the movement as a whole. If her hand was no longer on the helm, she never deserted her post on the bridge. A new Medical Bill was on the tapis at this time,—a Bill which—very rightly—made it essential that all doctors should hold a qualification in both medicine and surgery. As, however, no College of Surgeons would examine women (who nevertheless had gone through the required surgical training), this Bill would have had the result of placing women on a different and inferior footing to men as doctors, and the hard-won steps that had seemed to be cut in the solid rock would have melted away once more.
The General Medical Council, in its suggested amendments to the Bill, proposed to establish a special Board for the examination of women, and to admit them in the end to a separate register! It was the old “strawberry jam labels” over again. Moreover in order to conform with the requirements of this Board a woman must be in a position to assert that she had received no part of her education along with men,—a requirement that at once ruled out all the women who were enjoying the great privilege of studying at the University of Paris.
So there was small encouragement even now to relax that keen look-out on the bridge.
In Dr. Heron Watson, who was at that time President of the Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons, S. J.-B. had a keen and sympathetic adviser, and with his approval she wrote to her former supporters, Mr. Stansfeld, Lord Aberdare, Lord Ripon and others, begging them to keep a watchful eye on the interests of the women. Early in the spring of 1878 she had urged Mrs. Anderson to write to two or three of the London daily newspapers on the subject, while she herself undertook two or three more; and on April 19th she writes again:
“DEAR MRS. ANDERSON,—It occurs to me that it would be well for the 8 registered women to send up a distinct protest against the new Medical Bill to strengthen the hands of our friends in both Houses.
I have made a rough draft of what I should propose, and enclose a copy to you, while also forwarding one to Mr. Stansfeld. Before doing anything further I shall wait to hear what you and he think about it, and whether you have any alterations to propose.
If the plan is adopted, can you tell me how we can get Dr. Blackwell’s signature? There is no great hurry, as the petition need not be presented for three or four weeks.
Yours truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
To Mrs. Thorne she writes some months later,
“I had a long talk with Dr. Watson yesterday, and he tells me the Government is likely to drop the Medical Bill for this session. I shall be rather sorry if they do.
If they do not, I hope you will make a point of ‘keeping the run’ of every proposed amendment, and of watching very carefully how each may affect women. I should look out very sharp if I were in London, but here it is impossible to do so with sufficient efficiency and promptitude; so please don’t let anything slip. The matter is almost more important than School affairs, and even friendly M.P.’s are too busy to be trusted and often they don’t see the bearing of phrases. Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Cowper Temple or Dr. Cameron, could any of them get papers for you, but they need reminding.”
Amid these manifold interests life ran its course in the early years of practice. The happiest times were those when Miss Du Pre came to stay with her friend, and it was the dream of S. J.-B.’s life that these visits might develop into constant companionship. No one who was not a doctor ever took a more sympathetic interest in medical questions than did Miss Du Pre: her advice in difficult social and professional problems was invaluable; and then there was her delightful sense of fun! “The only witty friend I ever had,” S. J.-B. says about this time. And, added to all was her sheer goodness and interest in the poor.
“32 at Dispensary,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “One or two so hungry and forlorn that they went to my heart. Oh, dear, if only J. [Miss Du Pre] were here to do her half of the work!
No motto of mine that over the Venice monastery, ‘O solitudo, sola beatitudo!’”
It is needless to say that Miss Du Pre’s visits were as long and as frequent as the many other claims in her life made possible, and in her absence she entered as of old into every detail of her friend’s life.
Of course this friendship could not but take in great measure the place of the old enthusiasm for Octavia Hill, though the latter never died.
In May 1877 someone had told S. J.-B. of the “terrible trouble” Miss Hill was in. “Oh, dear,” she cried in her diary, “I’m ashamed of the first sort of thrill of triumph that she should know how it hurts!”[142]
Footnote 142:
It was not till later—not perhaps till she saw that regrettable number of Fors Clavigera that S. J.-B. had any clear idea what the trouble was.
“My life is full and complete again,” she writes in April 1878, “if somewhat greyer for all the past pain; and, if I can have J., the former things may abide in shadow till the day of restitution of all things. I can’t but believe that some day, some where, I shall learn what it all meant,—even now one sees in some measure ‘why it could not be otherwise.’
It is at any rate a grand thing that, over and through all, each has kept on at her work and done yeoman service.”
“Dear L. E. S. turned the tide, gave me back the beginning of strength and life, physical and mental, and since then for the last 12 years I have stumbled steadily onwards,—gaining in strength and calm and hope,—till at length I can feel a wholesome life of my own—quite independent of the old pain,—with a very dear hand in mine, and with a grand life of work and struggle against disease before me.”
On the last night of that year she writes:
“‘Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure,’ ... ‘and He shall strengthen thy heart.’...
I believe profoundly in the ‘that He might be able to succour’. One does learn through pain what one never learns without,—and, hard as it is to feel it, I suppose one knows the ‘power of ministration’—the ‘Lo, I come’ is higher and more than even the personal happiness.
So—take and use Thy work.
What is the use of talking about presenting ourselves a ‘living sacrifice,’—and then moaning over pain,—wanting to ‘freeze on a warm night’!
Oh, dear!—one’s own littleness.
Well, God teach and guide us all.”
A few weeks later she comes to the end of the volume, and writes in a sunnier vein:
“Yet surely,—‘hitherto He has helped us’—Look at beginning of this book,—or stronger still look back some 17 years and see how the light has arisen out of darkness,—and shall it not grow and grow.
I fully believe ‘God is very merciful to those who suffer young’. How much harder the other way.
And much to be thankful for in health. No neuralgia,—very great return of brain power....
Who can look forward?—who dare plan?
Domine dirige nos!”
II. LAST ILLNESS OF MRS. JEX-BLAKE
So far S. J.-B.’s success in Edinburgh had been on the whole greater than most of her friends had anticipated. The experiment could never have been made, had not Mrs. Jex-Blake agreed to spend her winters in Edinburgh. S. J.-B. was a good deal blamed by other members of the family for urging this arrangement; but it must be borne in mind that although Mrs. Jex-Blake was in fairly good general health, she was subject to sudden alarming attacks of illness which had repeatedly brought her daughter hundreds of miles in hot haste to the sick bed, regardless of the studies, or the still more important affairs she was leaving behind.
Modern methods would have grappled with the illness at its source long before the patient had reached her present age, and a radical cure might have restored her to perfect health: as it was she lay under a sword of Damocles, and was regarded as a more delicate woman than she really was.
It was impossible for S. J.-B. to embark on medical practice under these conditions; so the Sussex Square house was given up, and the old lady— who elected to have her own ménage—divided her time between her daughter in Edinburgh and her son at Rugby.
“You have always been different to me from my other children,” she said to S. J.-B.; and, if she spoke with a consciousness of the sword in her heart, the words were mainly a tribute to her younger daughter’s untiring devotion, and remained in later days the source of comfort they were meant to be.
Towards the end of April 1881 Mrs. Jex-Blake went south, leaving her daughter more reluctantly than usual. It was only those who knew S. J.- B. very intimately who were at all aware of the effort it sometimes cost her to get through each “day’s darg,” and to keep a bright face turned to her patients and a brave face to the world at large. She was more tired than usual at the end of that winter, and Mrs. Jex-Blake was well aware of this.
The usual series of love letters passed between Mother and daughter:
“Eastfield, April 30th. [1881].
OWN DARLING,
I am really well, but feel only half of myself without you. I am very good,—I sleep well, eat well—two hot dinners a day,—but, as I was very tired, keep my room, it is so much easier to be quiet there. Florence quite mothers me....
You may be sure Dobbs is most attentive—and backs anything she advises with the
Dr.’s wishes....”
“4 Manor Place, Edinburgh. May 1st.
... Many thanks for your dear little letters, but you mustn’t scribble too much to anybody!—Such sweet leaves in today’s note!
Yes, my darling, I miss my dear old lady very much, but we are both going to be very good, and get quite strong for our reunion in September. I shall be very grateful to you if you keep up your ‘two hot dinners’ honestly, and all the rest of it.... It breaks my heart to find you run down as I do year after year when I come to fetch you back again.
I don’t know exactly when Ursula comes, but you will hear from her.
Dr. M‘Laren is back,[143] and so vexed to have missed saying ‘Goodbye’!
Yours lovingly, SOPH.”
Footnote 143:
Dr. Agnes M‘Laren had taken the house adjoining S. J.-B.’s.
Towards the end of June Mrs. Jex-Blake was less well, but the doctor who attended her saw no cause for anxiety. On the 28th, however, alarming indications of the old enemy showed themselves suddenly, and he telegraphed to S. J.-B. to come immediately. There was one more rush south “on eagle’s wings,” but fortunately this time S. J.-B. had the companionship of Miss Du Pre, with whom she reached Rugby at 2 a.m.
The patient had been given up by the doctor and by all, and even S. J.- B., when she saw her, thought she was dying; but she fought for the precious life with every fibre of her being, refusing to own defeat and absolutely regardless of her own health. For ten days and nights she scarcely left the room. The doctor in attendance was only too glad that she should have a free hand, and after a few days they sent for Dr. King Chambers, in whose skill S. J.-B. had almost unlimited faith. His visit proved reassuring.
“Her life hung so evenly on the balance when I left,” he wrote next day, “that I was obliged to acknowledge to myself that my trust in her recovery was a sanguine one. Please one line about her, and, if it is a favourable one, I shall answer it by a little advice to yourself, which you will in that case be in a condition to take.”
On July 7th all looked well, and S. J.-B. felt the wonderful supporting power of hope, but, on the following day, there was a sudden turn for the worse, and at half past six in the evening, the patient passed quietly away.
* * * * *
The event is recorded in the diary by a great sheaf of blank pages, with a pathetic notice from the Times in the middle of them.
That is all, but constantly for a year, intermittently for many years, the diary recurs to the old longings and regrets, the gropings and questionings, the heart-searching and tears, that have followed every great bereavement. The reader of the preceding pages will not need to be told that S. J.-B. drank the cup to the dregs.
There were not a few who had lost in Mrs. Jex-Blake their dearest friend, but everyone’s first thought was of her younger daughter.
“I do hope,” writes that wise Heron Watson, “that you are not overborne by over much sorrow.”
“No human being loses what I do in her,” S. J.-B. wrote to her friend, James Cordery, and this was perfectly true. No one had loved her Mother as she had; no one else had the same cause; and no one else had the same appalling capacity for suffering.
It is interesting to note that of many beautiful letters of sympathy there is not one that strikes the reader as more truly comprehending than does Mrs. Anderson’s:
“4 Upper Berkeley Street, W. July 13th, 1881.
DEAR MISS JEX-BLAKE,
I have seen with very great regret the notice of your sorrow.
Knowing as I do how very close and tender was the tie between you and your Mother and also what a fine and ennobling influence she must have been to all within her range I am very full of sympathy for you. It is always very sad to break away from the past by losing one of these main links with it, but in your case there is very much to increase your sense of this. You have not (as so many others unhappily allow themselves to do) outlived the tenderness of the relationship. I hope that after a time it will be a comfort to you to remember this and to recal how happy she was in having so much affection from you.
I was very sorry to find I had written on business last Sunday at such a time.
Yours very truly, E. G. ANDERSON.”
S. J.-B.’s own letters are calm and restrained, of course. To her assistant in Edinburgh she writes,
“July 11th.
... Thanks for your kind note, and [your Mother’s] kind thoughtfulness.
But nothing would grieve me more than needlessly to part a Mother and daughter who still have each other, and I beg her to remain with you at least as arranged until the end of this month during which time I shall almost certainly remain here and try to get rested.
It was a hard battle,—it was bitter to fail just when we seemed winning, but I believe it was her wish to go. On Thursday I heard her murmur quietly, ‘Oh, Father, I pray Thee take me home,’—and now all is peace.
Yours sincerely, S. J.-B.”
About the work in Edinburgh S. J.-B. had no anxiety at all. It was her way, when she trusted people, to trust them whole-heartedly, and she had absolute confidence in the assistant who had worked with her for more than a year. Well, indeed, she might, for she was extraordinarily fortunate in that gallant-hearted and faithful young helper, whose only fault seems to have been that she threw herself too completely, too conscientiously, into everything she undertook,—her chief’s work and interests, together with her own studies and laboratory experiments.[144] S. J.-B. never realised what a responsibility her very trust was to one wholly worthy of it.
Footnote 144:
She was working at the solubility of fats, and the ether fumes were supposed to have proved insidiously poisonous.
In any case the double burden on the young shoulders proved too great, and there was a sudden and tragic breakdown ending in death.
One wonders how S. J.-B. bore the double shock. She had fancied herself “girt with the girdle of him who has nought,” when the second blow fell. She always said herself that she never could have won through but for Miss Du Pre, who simply carried her off to quiet places and tended her and brought her gradually back to the possibility of beginning again.
The practice in Edinburgh was given up for the time. There was nothing else to be done. Miss Ellaby took up the threads and finished them off as well as a stranger might; but there was no medical woman free to remain and fill the niche. It was hard on the practice.
* * * * *
In later years S. J.-B. met Mr. Frederick Myers, and she was induced by her impression of him to read his Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, when it appeared some time later. She was deeply interested in the book, and her mind was open on the subject always; but she “tried the spirits” severely. “No human being,” she said one day in the course of an earnest talk, “could strive to come into touch with one gone before more earnestly than I tried to come into touch with my Mother. I used to lie awake at night concentrating every faculty on the effort. But I got no response.”
Her diary became her great outlet again in those dark days, in some places almost, as of old, a very cento of beautiful or poignant thoughts from the treasure-house of her memory; but that was never the side she turned to the world, though intimate friends got glimpses of it that startled them. One guessed it too from her anxiety to spare others the pain she had suffered herself.
“Don’t you ever go through the farce, dear, of thinking you haven’t been good to me,” she said to a friend years after this; and, although throughout life she often spoke hastily and over-sharply, she never spoke a word that might poison the night-watches for those she left behind. Coventry Patmore’s terrible poem[145] could never have been inspired by her.
Footnote 145:
“Poor Child.”
To one of her nieces she writes:
“Sept. 2nd, 1881.
DEAR ——,
I found the enclosed treasured among Grandmamma’s most valued papers, and I am sure you will like to have it back and to see how she kept and cared for it through so many years....
I think all your life it will be a pleasure to you remember how much you added to her happiness and helped to take care of her during the last few years. She always said you were ‘a little mother’ to her.
Your affec. aunt, S. J.-B.”
III. PATIENTS AND FRIENDS
It was hard to go back to the house in Manor Place, so full of associations, and, as soon as might be, S. J.-B. and Miss Du Pre removed to Bruntsfield Lodge, a roomy, rambling old house[146] with a shady, high-walled garden, standing high on the south side of Edinburgh, overlooking Bruntsfield Links. The sunny rooms and the possibility of stepping out into quiet greenness were worth a fortune to the strained nerves and over-active brain.
Footnote 146:
This house is now the picturesque nucleus of the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children.
“You will be glad to hear that I am much stronger,” S. J.-B. writes to Dr. Sewall in September 1883, “and am sleeping excellently. I have just begun also to take short rides, and I do not think they tire me too much.”
Here then she began the life of comparative seclusion and active beneficence which was to last for sixteen years. The keynote of her existence was sharing, taking others with her, and the joy of sharing this comfortable house and garden was very great.
Miss Du Pre’s absence is the occasion for some playful letters written quite in a patriarchal spirit:
“August 25th. [1883.]
... I have had an addition to my family as well as Mrs. B.,—though it isn’t yet in the Times first column,—viz. a delightfully comic small dog, white with one black eye, whom I have christened Toby, and whom I bought from the Home for Lost Dogs for the large sum of 2s. 6d. The police take stray dogs there, and if no one claims them, or buys them, they are killed; so this little fellow has escaped by the skin of his teeth, in virtue of his supposed excellences in the cat-chasing line![147] Has cottoned up to me most amusingly—followed me about all day, and whined at the door when shut out....
The two boys are delighted, of course,—especially A., who declares Mr. Toby to be the moral of a dog for whom his late master ‘wouldn’t take £100.’ Nice profit wouldn’t it be if I clear £99. 17s. 6d.!
Lest the household should be too full, I have sent off a member,—viz., White Angel, to grass for a week at Currie,—H. being so overjoyed at being let ride him out that cook declared he ‘couldn’t eat his lunch‘! He walked back (6 miles) in 1¾ hr., not bad, was it?
Miss A. is coming tonight,—Mrs. J. went this afternoon. By the bye on Thursday she asked me to ‘see Baby for a minute,’ and I found the child white and out of sorts, rather feverish, etc., and overjoyed Mrs. J. by prescribing ‘a little Bruntsfield’. So she has been out here for 2 days, tumbling in the hay and delighting Ann’s heart. She is so fond of children.
I also sent Mrs. S. off to Brackenrigg yesterday, as I decided she did want a change before beginning a winter’s work. The fare was 17s. 4d., and I gave her the rest of £4, which will pay everything for 10 days, with 5s. or 6s. to spare. I haven’t heard from her yet, but I am sure she will be in the seventh heaven.
Probably she will see Miss Anthony there,—she went the previous day....
I think it was very good of you to ask for the Baring votes!...”
Footnote 147:
S. J.-B. made great friends with the birds in her garden, and cats were accordingly taboo.
“Sept. 4th.
... Mrs. S. lunched here today, and says she feels infinitely better for the change,—things no longer worry her in the same way. She tells me that the red-room gentleman was back,[148]—and that being confined to bed one day, he evidently heard Miss Anthony haranguing on Women’s Rights in the next room,—and Mrs. W. told them that he had asked ‘when those two ladies were going,—for he heard enough to know they were men-haters, and he was a woman hater!”
Footnote 148:
S. J.-B. and Miss Du Pre had visited the same hotel that summer.
“Sept. 9th.
I’ve had another addition to my family,—not a permanent one this time! A. J. was very anxious not to catch scarlet fever so as to be thrown back for his examinations, etc., and so I have taken him in for a few days, and given him ——’s room upstairs. (Do you think W. is in any danger?) He seems a very nice lad, but by no means strong. He is so very pleased with the quiet,—he says he can sleep so much better. Now a lad of his age ought to be able to sleep in any row!”
“Sept. 13th.
... The grapes are getting on famously, some will be ripe within a week I think, but they will be rather small this year.”
“Sept. 23rd.
You needn’t have asked so meekly for ‘2 or 3 grapes’. We have cut none yet, but when they first began to colour, the most forward bunch was dubbed ‘Miss Du Pre’s,’—and for the last 10 days the household might be seen every morning with upturned chins gazing to see ‘if Miss Du Pre’s bunch is ready’,—H. going up the ladder and hanging in all sorts of odd positions to look at it all round.
The combined wisdom has decided to cut it tomorrow—in spite of a red berry or two which won’t get right,—so probably you will get it on Wednesday morning by P.P. Be sure to tell me how it travels.”
The first few months in the new house were a time of comparative leisure, and S. J.-B.’s friends received letters less telegraphic in their succinctness than they afterwards tended to become. The following is to Mrs. Brander, who (when Miss Isobel Bain) had accompanied S. J.-B. to America:
“Sept. 26th. [1883.]
DEAREST BEL,
I wish you could peep in and see my new house now that it is fairly in order. I think the quiet and airiness will be of very great value to me. I have felt much better since I came here....
You have so often wished for good medical women in India that you must now be pleased to have your wish granted. I don’t know if you know Mrs. Scharlieb who is just entering on practice at Madras, but, if you don’t, I wish you would go and call on her, and give my card. I do not know her personally, but I have corresponded with her, and respect her much for the gallant way in which she got her education, first at Madras and then coming to England to perfect herself. She passed the very difficult examinations of the University of London (M.B. and B.S.) with great distinction, and won the gold medal in Obstetrics from the whole University....
Have you heard also that Dr. Edith Pechey is going to settle at Bombay? She has been invited to do so by a committee of native gentlemen, who guarantee her an income and find her a hospital....
I am very sorry to lose her from England, but very glad to have so admirable a representative in India. She always wins golden opinions and does such excellent work. I do hope the Government will do something for her. I have just written to Lord Ripon about her.
You know I suppose that Mr. Fawcett has appointed a medical woman (Miss Shove) as medical officer to the women post office clerks, with £350 a year. It is an immense step in public opinion.
I am getting on very well here, but I begin to feel I am getting old. My hair is so grey!...
Dear old Mrs. Brander came to see me the other day, looking as nice as ever, ... I think I care more and more for old people’s happiness as compared to young, though the world is hard enough for them too sometimes,—and hardest of all I sometimes think for the middle-aged folks who have outlived the spring and energy of youth and not reached the calm of age. How much pain one sees in the world!
I hope your life is getting easier and happier every year, dear child. Tell me all about yourself some day....
Yours affectionately, S. J.-B.”
She was planning a new edition of her book, Medical Women, at this time, and she wrote to Mr. Osler to ask for statistics as to the percentage of women, as compared with men, who had so far passed the examinations of the University of London. In reply to his information she writes:
“Feb. 3rd. 1884.
DEAR MR. OSLER,
I can hardly express strongly enough how grateful I am both to you and to Mr. Milman, for the very valuable tables of numbers sent me....
Please do not doubt for a moment that I quite agree with you that it is unfair to compare ‘picked women’ (i.e. really in earnest) and ‘unpicked men’. I have said so repeatedly. But you must remember that a very few years ago I had a very hard fight to get it admitted as a possibility that some women might do as good work as men. In ‘Visits to American Schools’ (published 1867) I wrote with at least sufficient diffidence,—‘Whether most women would be capable of the amount of study required, for instance, for one of our University degrees, I really do not know,’ etc. My one contention has been all along,—‘Give a fair field and try’— and no one can exaggerate the gratitude that all women ought to feel to the University of London for giving that field.
At the same time, while quite conceding that ‘percentages’ need correction by certain considerations on the men’s side,—youth, want of choice, etc.,—you must not forget that women are quite as much weighted in other ways,—e.g. by the greater reluctance of parents to spend money on their education, and the more inconsiderate claims made on their time, etc., at home, inferior early teaching, etc., so that after all one set of difficulties go far to balance another.
From a medical point of view my chief anxiety now is how women are going to stand the strain; I am very much afraid of seeing the movement discredited by the breakdown in health of girls who begin too young, or with inadequate physical stamina, or who try to ‘burn the candle at both ends’ by combining society or home duties with serious study.
However, I must not trespass longer on your time and kind patience, and with repeated thanks, I remain,
Yours very gratefully, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
This subject of the education of girls had been brought prominently before her mind by the breakdown of a rarely gifted young friend. S. J.-B. had some great talks on the subject with Miss Buss and others, and she wrote to various papers about the danger of over-pressure. “The headmistresses have a difficult problem before them,” she says, “but it has got to be faced.”
As a matter of fact the problem was destined to be solved abundantly in due course by the development of games and physical culture generally,—all that side of life for the lack of which she herself had suffered so terribly.
She was specially interested, of course, in the daughters of her old friends, and, of these, Hermione Unwin and Katie Ballantyne held a special place in her regard. To the former she writes:
“July 29th. 1884.
MY DEAR HERMIE,
Thank you for sending me your examination papers. I am very glad that you passed so successfully. What now interests me most is to know to what use all this work is to be turned, for after all knowledge is noblest when it becomes an instrument of work beyond itself. Have you any tastes or wishes, or any thought of any special kind of work?
I daresay that after all this study the best thing you can do is to rest on your oars for six months or a year, but during that time I hope you will be thinking in what way you can turn yourself to best account. There is so much that needs doing in the world, and it is such a privilege to help in the doing of it. I hope you will write and tell me when you have any definite thoughts on the subject.
I have already had my holiday for this year, having spent June in driving about (with the white pony) in the Perthshire highlands with my friend, Miss Du Pre. I think there is hardly any kind of holiday that rests one so much. You should persuade your Father to take you all in a waggonette, a long drive into Scotland or to the English Lakes. If you should decide on Scotland, I should hope to find this house used as a stopping-place. I think I could take you all in pretty comfortably.
Remember me very kindly to Mr. Unwin, and believe me
Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
Here is an interesting letter to an old friend whose husband’s distinguished career separated her for the time from a dearly-loved daughter:
“I much enjoyed seeing her for the flying visit which was all she vouchsafed me, and I am delighted to see how very much she is improved,—very much more healthy in mind and body all round....
She amused me much by plunging headlong into some theological difficulties,—which reminded me of how she (aged 6!) used to harass you about the Trinity. Her great trouble seems to be that she can’t feel sure the world is governed by a beneficent and omnipotent God,—she thinks there is so much pain in it which wouldn’t be allowed unless God either didn’t wish to help it, or couldn’t help it. That has never been my difficulty,—I have always had such a devout belief in the possible blessing of pain,—
‘Because all noblest things are born In agony.’
Do you remember Miss Cobbe’s hymn?
However she asked me if I felt sure the world was governed, etc., and I said frankly that I hadn’t absolutely made up my mind,—that it seemed to me we had very small means of being ‘sure’ of anything,—but that I thought, if there was a Ruler both good and all powerful, it was at least perfectly conceivable that He might allow all the pain, etc., partly because the very theory of free will involved possibilities of evil with its consequences which not even Omnipotence could avert, and partly because He might see that pain was at any given moment the very best thing for the person who suffered it.
Then she went off to,—Did I think it possible that any Being could follow out the lives of millions of creatures at once, etc.,—to which I said that certainly I couldn’t conceive how it should be possible; but neither could I conceive many other things that yet we knew to be scientific truths,—e.g. that our whole earth could be swallowed up in one of the ‘spots’ of the sun, and not fill up the spot, and that that very sun is only a unit in a myriad of worlds whose immensities simply reduce us to silence.
However I didn’t mean to inflict a réchauffé of all this upon you, though I think you will like to know how the child’s mind is working. Let it work!—being in a wholesome atmosphere of love and labour, she will learn all sorts of practical replies to theoretical difficulties, and come to no harm.”
Interesting, as bearing on the above, is another letter written to someone else about the same time:
“It is a double principle with me never to bring forward theological questions, and never to seek to change the opinions of anyone who is satisfied with his or her own; and on the other hand to be always ready to say exactly what I think myself about any given point to any intelligent person who cares to ask me the question, and to say frankly where I feel that I know nothing. I do not think anyone can possibly be more conscious than I of the immense vastness and difficulty of questions that the general public answer glibly offhand, and of my own utter incompetency to decide in the abstract ‘what is truth’. Practically I think one is generally able to see one’s own duty day by day, and probably Browning is right—
‘... more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act tomorrow what he learns today.’
Beyond that, I suppose that all that any of us can do is to be very chary of either asserting or denying, but to strive to keep our whole souls open to every ray of light we can get, and hope some day to learn everything that it is needful for us to know. Personally I am always getting to feel that opinions matter less and less, and motives and feelings more and more.
Excuse this long dissertation and believe me,
Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
In December 1885 she writes to Miss Du Pre:
“Yes, we shall miss poor old X. sadly. It does seem pathetic, doesn’t it?—and yet don’t you think it is something to be taken away just when you have attained your highest ambition?... The first thing I thought,—as it almost always is,—was, I wonder what he thinks now that he ‘knows what Rhamses knows’. It always does strike me so very curiously when someone who has never, I suppose, thought half as much as I about the mysteries of life and death, goes in in front of me,—if there is any ‘going in’. I thought it so very strongly about Vanderbilt. How will he get on where everything isn’t reckoned as on the Stock Exchange?”
Although the new house was certainly not in a central position, S. J.-B.’s practice steadily grew. As the first woman doctor in Scotland, she had, as she had told Sir Thomas Barlow, numerous cases that had long gone untreated, and she was the recipient of many a pent-up confidence. The Edinburgh that criticized her would have been surprised if it had known some of the secrets that lay, so safely, in her keeping. She was often called upon to be a Mother Confessor, and, although she always declared that “one profession is enough for one person,” her practice was by no means so rigid in this respect as was her theory. Many strange problems were discussed in that quiet consulting-room, with its book-lined walls and green spaces outside. To the end of life her impulsiveness led her into mistakes for which she had to suffer, but her advice to others was extraordinarily sane and good. Yet the idealist in her never slept. “I took Colani from the shelf,” she says on one occasion, “and read, ‘Cast thyself down,—for the devil can suggest; compel can he never.’”
She was often asked, too, to take a resident patient who wished to have her own suite of rooms and sometimes her own attendant. More than one of these patients became personal friends.
She of course received high fees for cases of this kind, but she often had resident patients who paid no fees at all. Some governess who could not get well in dreary lodgings would be simply wrapped up in blankets and carried off in the brougham—or was it on a comet’s tail?—a messenger having been sent up to the house,—“Have blue room ready in half-an-hour. Am bringing patient.”[149]
Footnote 149:
“Ah,” said an old servant in later years. “We did see life in that house!”
“I wonder,” writes a patient at this time, “if you have any idea how pleasant it is to be lifted on somebody’s shoulders and carried away from the shadows of your own life into the brightness of theirs. No I do not think you can have; you do not seem to have dwelt in the shadows.”
And another writes,
“I know you will believe me when I say that I have rarely, if ever, been so supremely happy as during the past few weeks. The feeling of peace and comfort was so delicious, and I only wish I could prove myself just a little worthy of all I have enjoyed.”
We have seen how on one occasion she took in a lad who could not afford to risk incurring the infection of scarlet fever. On another occasion, when visiting a patient, she was asked to see a boy of ten, who had unluckily fallen ill while paying a short visit to the house. His hostess did not understand boys, and he was having an uncomfortable time. His plight roused all the boy—and there was plenty of it—in S. J.-B. She carried him off, mothered him, took him for drives when she could, got him well, and apparently made him happy. At all events, when the time came to say Goodbye, he flung his arms round her neck and kissed her!
There are some men who are born with an instinctive knowledge of the right thing to do in unusual circumstances.
Most useful was the comet’s tail in cases where some overworked brain was on the point of a breakdown, where a worry was developing into an idée fixe, and threatening to drive the patient mad. S. J.-B. would carry the patient off, regardless of possible developments more disconcerting even than an outbreak of scarlet fever in her house, tend her, feed her up, make her sleep, sympathize with her, bully her, laugh at her, till the patient was ready to fall into line and laugh at herself. Some of these “cures” were extraordinarily rapid and complete, and there is no record of a single failure.
She never heard of any over-weighted woman or child without asking herself whether she could lift the burden.
“DEAR CARRY,”—she writes to her sister about this time—“... I don’t like the idea of our teacher looking ‘pale and anxious’,—do you know if she has any special troubles?—or is likely to be short of money? Has she relations with whom she spends her holidays? or is she at Bettws now?—When do the holidays begin and end? What pay has she now?—Has it been raised lately?—What is her name and nation?
A sad number of questions, but very short replies will suffice.
Your aff. sister, S. J.-B.”
It was partly because she had so many guests of this kind that she made it an absolute rule that none of her servants were to receive gratuities from visitors,—a rule that some of the visitors disliked extremely, and even refused to submit to. Such cases sometimes led to an amusing breeze of correspondence of which the following is a sample:
“SIR,
Well acquainted as I am with your many and great iniquities, I confess that I did not expect you wantonly to abuse our humble hospitality by deliberately inciting our household to rebellion against constituted authority as distinctly announced to you by written warning on the mantel-piece.[150] Manifold as are the notorious vices of the Conservative mind, I had supposed it to have some slight reverence for law, national or domestic. In future I shall know better.
Sir, the humble but incorruptible member of my household whose integrity you sought to corrupt, begs me to re-inclose to you the accompanying lucre (2s. 6d.), of whose history you so falsely pretended yourself ignorant, and as I see no reason why I should be impoverished in consequence of your evil doings, I request you to repay me on your return from the continent the commission charged by H.M. Government (viz. ½d.) upon the enclosed remittance.
I am Sir, Yours more in sorrow than in anger, S. J.-B.”
Footnote 150:
“On est prié de ne rien donner aux domestiqúes.”
The postal order was indignantly returned, with a request to do what she liked with it, so she at once sent it to the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, directing the secretary to forward the receipt to her refractory Conservative guest!
Notwithstanding this, and other differences of opinion, he paid many more visits to her house, and for the future contrived usually, at least, to elude her vigilance.
She used to consult him in all sorts of legal difficulties, and he replied with unfailing patience.
“DEAR JAMES,”—she wrote on one occasion,—“I want to make a codicil, leaving some money to ..., the income to her for life,— the capital between her daughters. Will you please tell me the simplest words in which I can do this?”
In sending a rough draft, he inserted the words,—“if only one such daughter.”
“Of course I can put in ‘if only one such daughter,’ if you like,” she replied, “but at present there are seven!”
The initial mistake, of course, was hers, and it was a kind of mistake that was very unusual with her.
Her correspondence was very large,—so large that she never had time to write a “proper letter about ‘Shakespeare and the musical glasses’,” as she would have said. To her most intimate friends she wrote with spontaneous charm,—letters circumstantial, tender, nonsensical, as the case might be. “Do you ever write any letters that would look well in your memoir?” asks Miss Du Pre. “I begin to be anxious about that book. It seems to me that it will be so fearfully dull,—unless your diaries ... prove to be amusing.”
On the other hand, strangers consulted her about manifold schemes and perplexities, and she always asked herself how she could help.
“Dear Madam,” wrote one of these, “As you sit alone in the evening with the curtains drawn, imagine that a woman steals into your room, hunted to death by men. I am that woman....”
Even this sensational beginning did not put S. J.-B. off, and it was weeks before she allowed herself to be persuaded—by Dr. Pechey and Miss Du Pre—that the case was one for Dr. Clouston rather than for her.
* * * * *
But it was in her Dispensary, with working women and girls, that one saw her, perhaps, at her best. She was so vital, so sympathetic, yet so full of humour and common sense that the regular provident patients were devoted to her. They knew there was nothing to be gained by arguing. “Well, I must just take my scolding,” they would say resignedly. So keenly did she sympathize with their difficulty in following out her directions in their own homes that in 1885 she added a few beds to the Dispensary, and thus formed the nucleus of the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children, which has since grown to great things and has been honoured by a visit from the Queen.
Where the case was serious, and the remedy lay in the husband’s hands, S. J.-B. always took the bull by the horns. “Ask him to come and have a little talk with me,” she would say breezily. “Tell him I can see him at such and such hours.” And he would come!
She was admirably fitted for work of this kind. No woman was ever more strictly fair. An injured husband was no less—and no more—sure of her sympathy than was an injured wife.
And, of course, it was the old and feeble who at once found the radiant side of her.
“The thanks and blessings of old J. G.—85—bring a rush of tears,— ‘Ah, somebody be good to my old lady!’
And yet I suppose she may be ‘old’ no longer, but young and strong and bright, and sorry for my weakness and weariness,—
‘waits on the hills of Paradise For her children’s coming feet.’”
She seldom rose quite above this sense of effort and weariness, though few would have guessed it. “I always get so much good from being with you,” writes Lady Jenkinson,—“body and soul—especially soul.... I wish you would ’fess when you feel downcast.”
In her inmost circle, of course, she did ’fess, pretty often. “Not strong enough for the place, John,” she used often to quote whimsically from Punch. And here is an interesting bit of heresy in a letter to Dr. Sewall—
“I don’t at all agree by the bye with your theory that ‘there is nothing like work for producing real happiness.’ I don’t find that it has even any tendency to produce it, though of course one must work if one is able. ‘Otherwise she drops at once below the dignity of man,’—so says Aurora Leigh.
To quote Mrs. Browning again,—‘What’s the best thing in the world?—Something out of it I think.’”
The reader will not need to be told that the poetry of her nature had not been crushed out by that long fight. Far from it. All through the strenuous days she had been supported by the very poems she had repeated by the fireside in Sussex Square, but the store had grown till her repertory must have been nearly unique. To many passages from the Psalms and Isaiah, George Herbert, Trench, Alford and others, she had added a harvest from Whittier, Emerson, Lowell and divers less known American poets. She loved her Tennyson and Browning too—Abt Vogler and Rabbi Ben Ezra—but indeed the “poetry book-case” included a very catholic range, from Macaulay’s Lays to Swinburne and Christina Rossetti, with a corner for Jean Ingelow and for Mrs. Hamilton King. We have seen the store she set in her youth on some of Sadie’s Poems. No one who has ever heard it will forget how the “pathetic voice” would repeat:
“Is it so, O Christ in Heaven, that the highest suffer most? That the strongest wander farthest, and more hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?— ‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.‘”
or again,
“No, no, by all the martyrs, and the dear dead Christ; By the long bright roll of those whom joy enticed With her myriad blandishments, but could not win. Who would fight for victory, but would not sin.
By these our elder brothers who have gone before, And have left their trail of light upon our shore. We can see the glory of a seeming shame, We can feel the fulness of an empty name.”
It was recitations like this that formed the nucleus of the “incomparable evenings in the Doctor’s Study” to which Dr. Lillie Saville referred (see pp. 390-1, footnote). When life was not too exacting—and sometimes when it was—such evenings were very frequent, and they were a great refreshment after the burden and heat of the day.
* * * * *
She derived much relaxation, too, from the best of the unceasing current that flows through the circulating libraries. Her brief criticisms of books are often interesting. She was disappointed in George Eliot’s Life, because the long series of letters was not sufficiently welded together by narrative. Of the Carlyles she agreed with Mrs. Oliphant that “there was a great deal of love on both sides,—with very raw nerves.” Of two books she confessed to Miss Du Pre that she “sobbed over them like a baby,”—one was Laetus Sorte Mea, the other The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen.
IV. PUBLIC LIFE
It is not to be supposed that the “cataracts and breaks” were a thing of the past. There were many who found S. J.-B. a delightful person to work with, but even they had no difficulty in seeing how it was that others had a different experience.
“But the Doctor is nearly always right,” said one of her assistants in later years, “when she differs from other people.” And this was perfectly true. She was nearly always right; but the few times she was wrong were sufficient in many quarters to give the dog the proverbial “bad name.”
Moreover, one must frankly admit that her rightness was often too uncompromising, too business-like, too far in advance of what other people could be expected to agree with, too inconsiderate of ordinary human frailty. “You treat other people like pawns,” Miss Du Pre used to tell her, but, although she quoted the remark, she never seemed really to grasp it.
During the first few years of her life at Bruntsfield Lodge she took a great interest in local women’s questions. She was a moving spirit in the organization of one or two large suffrage meetings, and in the laborious propagandism and canvassing involved in the election of women as poor law guardians. Evidence of the thoroughness of her work persists to this day; but it was not always appreciated by the Edinburgh ladies who coöperated with her. They thought her so big and masterful that nobody else got a chance. It was just as well that her own special work absorbed her more and more. In 1884 she had written for Macmillan (at the instigation of her friend Mrs. S. R. Gardiner) a useful little book on The Care of Infants, which was warmly received by the profession and by a considerable public, and she was steadily taking notes for a second edition of her Medical Women, which should bring the narrative down to the date of publication.
Public affairs, too, demanded their share of interest. That weary Medical Bill kept cropping up at intervals, and S. J.-B. was often appealed to privately by members of parliament and others for information and advice. They were well aware, of course, that her main interest was to safeguard the rights and privileges of women, but they also knew something of her mental acumen and thoroughness of method. Moreover, she was unconnected with any of the great vested interests which constituted the great stumbling block in the way of any Bill. There is a telegram extant addressed to her by the President of the Edinburgh College of Physicians who had gone up to London to watch the debate,—“Please wire Mr. Stansfeld to be sure to be here in time to secure dropping of bill proposed.”
Towards the end of 1884, the Edinburgh Extra-Mural School made an effort towards incorporation, and memorialized the Privy Council to grant them a Charter. S. J.-B. was anxious to take advantage of this opportunity to raise again the question of the admission of women to medical education in Scotland, especially as, by this time, the various missionary bodies were quite alive to the importance of the subject.
“The Free Church are also willing to move,” she writes to Mr. Stansfeld on November 20th, “and they wish to memorialize the Privy Council direct, and to request that any Charter granted may not exclude women, but make it at least optional for the College to admit them. To my intense amusement the request has just come to me that I will ‘draft’ such a memorial, but I have not the remotest idea how even to address the Privy Council!”
It was not only the Free Church that asked her help. The lecturers, mindful of her power of enlisting the sympathy of statesmen in the past, also begged her to use her influence in high quarters, and, through the National Association, to present a petition to the Privy Council. Mr. Stansfeld was helpful as ever, advising her to interview Lord Carlingford, from whom she had a gracious reception. “But the primary condition must be,” she writes to Dr. Littlejohn, “that the Charter distinctly commits the College to the admission of women on equal terms. If this is not approved, the whole thing falls to the ground.”
The reader of the foregoing chapters might not unnaturally be prepared to hear that the College was duly incorporated, and that the women were left in the lurch; but it was the unexpected that happened. The effort of the Extra-Mural School to achieve incorporation failed, but the examining bodies for which the School existed, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, decided a few months later to admit women. We may reasonably suppose that the renewed discussion of the whole question had not been in vain, but, so far as S. J.-B. was concerned, it was a case of the seed cast into the ground, which springs and grows up “he knoweth not how.” On March 17th, 1885, she writes to Dr. Pechey:
“Meanwhile I have two splendid pieces of news to send you, if they have not yet reached you,—viz. (1) The Irish College of Surgeons has not only opened all its examinations, and even its fellowships, to women, but also all the classes in its School,— making separate arrangements for Practical Anatomy only. (2) More wonderful still, the Scottish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh and Glasgow (now combined to give one ‘Triple Qualification’) have decided without a division to throw open all their examinations to women. I am exceedingly surprised, for though I heard an application had been made, I thought there was little hope of success, and took no trouble about it. However, so it is, and I hope to have classes opened in the Extra-Mural School (and perhaps in connection with St. Andrews) next winter. Somebody has left St. Andrews (subject to a life interest) a legacy of £50,000 on condition of admitting women. So you see all round ‘Pigs is looking up.’
Mrs. Russel was here for a few days a fortnight ago, and is as nice as ever.”
This great advance gave a fresh impetus and point to the publication of Medical Women,[151] which was duly achieved a few months later. It called forth a great sheaf of congratulatory letters from those who remembered the old days.
Footnote 151:
Medical Women, by Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier. The book has long been out of print, but, as a storehouse of facts, it is largely drawn upon by all writers on the subject, including the author of the present volume.
“Of course,” wrote Dr. King Chambers, “future generations will think it necessary to season your arguments with the traditionary grain of salt; but the facts are so clearly and calmly stated that they will be accepted absolutely. As to the character of the movement itself, the future must give it.”
“I am glad I was always a steady, if humble, adherent to the side of justice before its cause was popular,” wrote Professor Charteris. “I hope that you will long and increasingly enjoy the position that you had such a hard fight to win. You got all the buffets for many a day.”
And Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell:
“I am sorry that we have lost you from London. We much need that combination of unselfish activity and wise combination of practical qualities which we find in no other of the leaders of the movement.”
“What a change,” says Dr. Heron Watson, “has come over the spirit of the Medical Corporation since the story of your efforts in the cause first appeared.”
And this—finally—is from a generous letter from the Revd. William Pechey:
“If Edith is entitled to the praise of having borne, as you say, ‘an excellent part’ in the movement you narrate, she would, I am sure, be the first to join me in saying that you alone can fairly say: ‘Quorum maxima pars fui.’”
But the mention of Dr. Pechey’s name reminds one of a delightful letter she forwarded from her little friend Rukhmabai (now Dr. Rukhmabai) who, needless to say, was not one of those who remembered the old days.
“Girgaum, “23rd June, 1886.
MY DEAR MISS PECHEY,
I herewith return ... one of your books (The Roman Singer), with many thanks. I looked it all over just enough to know the purport of the story, which I found contains nothing but mere love matters.
I shall return the other book (Medical Women) in a few days. It is so very interesting to me that I don’t like to drop a single word of it while reading. It gives me a great comfort as I see the truth won the victory at last, though you had to suffer so much even in a country like Europe. I would never have believed if some common person were to tell me, that the people there were so against to allow women to study medicine....
Yours affectionately, RUKHMABAI.”
S. J.-B. was interested too at this time in the development of a volume for the publication of which she had been responsible in the first instance,—that most useful gazetteer, The Englishwoman’s Year Book,—the success of which has unhappily never been comparable to its merits: and she continued to advise and help the first editor, her friend, Miss Louisa Hubbard.
In 1886 she was asked to deliver one of a series of Health Lectures in Edinburgh, and of course she consented gladly,—her special lecture being addressed to women only. The lectures were free, and the lecturers unpaid.
When arrangements were far advanced, she found that the Committee proposed to charge one shilling for admittance to her lecture, and she promptly rebelled. She wanted all her Dispensary patients and all their friends to come and hear what she had to say, and the charge seemed to her to do away with more than half the good of her lecture. It was represented to her that a charge was also to be made for the corresponding lecture to men only, but she did not consider the cases identical. In any case the men’s lecture was no affair of her’s.
Mrs. Trayner (afterwards Lady Trayner) was an important person on that committee, and she and Lord Trayner had a great respect and cordial regard for S. J.-B. They understood her, and they wanted other people to understand her too. They were most anxious that she should waive her objection to the shilling charge, partly and especially because she was coöperating in the matter of the Health Lectures with men doctors, and they—the Trayners—wanted her to show herself gracious and conciliatory.
S. J.-B.’s reply to Mrs. Trayner’s letter is characteristic of her attitude at that time:
“Pray thank Lord Trayner warmly for his kind interest in me and the medical women generally. I think, however, that he somewhat over-estimates the importance of what the men doctors may think one way or the other. You and he will remember that all that we have gained has been gained in the teeth of nearly all of them, and if they have failed to hinder me hitherto, they are certainly powerless to hurt me now.... I am willing enough to shake hands with them if they wish it, but you must remember that it is I and not they who have the old sores to forgive....
I am sure you will understand that I say this merely because I want you to understand that my position is probably one of the most independent in Edinburgh,—I want nothing from anybody and I fear nothing from anybody. I mean to do in this, and larger matters, what seems to me right, to the best of my lights, and I have long ago learned while doing so to leave consequences to take care of themselves.
With hearty thanks for your kindness, believe me,
Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.
Pray excuse this hasty line, written at the end of a long day’s work.”
If this seems written in an ungracious and reprehensible spirit, the reader must bear in mind the fire the writer had come through. And after all what is it but a somewhat pagan rendering of St. Paul’s “From henceforth let no man trouble me....”
In any case the Trayners were not of the kind to take offence. Their interest in S. J.-B. and her work remained unbroken. Lady Trayner visited the Dispensary more than once and took on as a regular pensioner a brave old patient with a disfigured face, who appealed to her sympathies more than most.
The lecture was free, and proved a great success.
“You will like to know,” writes S. J.-B. to Miss Irby, “that my lecture went off very well, the hall (which holds nearly 2000) was crammed to the doors and stairways, and I lectured from slight notes, much better, Ursula says, than if I had read a lecture.
I have already had 4 new patients in consequence.”
It now remained for women to avail themselves de facto of their admission de jure to the Royal Colleges. “I trust,” wrote S. J.-B. in a letter to the Times, announcing the fresh step gained, “I trust that classes will now within a few months be re-opened in Edinburgh. With a view to definite arrangements for the ensuing winter session, I shall be very glad to receive the names of any ladies desiring to study in Scotland.” A few days later she wrote to the secretary of the Extra-Mural School, who happened to be an old ally.
“Bruntsfield Lodge, March 17. [1886].
DEAR DR. MACADAM,
I have already had nearly a dozen letters from ladies wishing to study Medicine in Scotland, so it is clear that the demand is real and considerable.
Can you give me any printed statement about the classes, etc., in the Extra Mural School?... Of course I know that if separate classes were required much greater expense must be involved, but I sincerely hope that most of the lecturers may be willing to admit women in the ordinary way. If so, I believe that a considerable number would join the classes next winter. If you would kindly let me have a list of the Lecturers, and would tell me when the next meeting is to be, I might (if you thought it desirable) see some of them before the meeting. I wish very much that the matter could be favourably decided next month, as this would give us time to make arrangements, and get up a good class, etc.
Would it not be well for you before the meeting to get an official letter from the Registrar of the Irish College of Surgeons stating that women are admitted to all the ordinary classes (except Practical Anatomy) at Dublin?
To turn to another subject,—can you tell me the chemical nature of the fluid contained in “Fire-Extinguishing Grenades,” etc. Are they really reliable?
Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
It is clear from this that she had not the smallest intention nor wish to found a separate School of Medicine for Women; but her hopes as regarded the lecturers were doomed to disappointment. On the whole they showed themselves enlightened and helpful, but they declined to admit women to their ordinary classes.
They were quite willing—some of them—to lecture to women separately, but one could not expect first-rate men in rising practice to devote an hour or more of precious time daily without more adequate remuneration than the fees of the first handful of women students were likely to represent. There must, of course, be a sufficient guarantee to make the undertaking worth their while, and the students were assuredly not in a position to provide that guarantee; so S. J.-B. made herself responsible for it at once.
For the first year the women attended separate lectures at one of the men’s schools, but it soon became obvious that separate premises, in which students could study and dissect, and change their dress, and generally make themselves at home, were, if not absolutely necessary, at least highly desirable.
Now it happened that, in the days of the old struggle, in a moment perhaps when hope ran high, S. J.-B., Miss Louisa Stevenson and Miss Du Pre had bought the famous old premises in Surgeon Square, which had been a medical school for generations. Here Robert Knox had lectured to his students, and the place had thrilling and sinister associations with Burke and Hare. When all hope of education in Edinburgh seemed finally blighted, these premises had been let to various tenants, but S. J.-B. had never lost sight of the possibility that they might some day be used again for their original purpose.
So now the old place was repaired and cleaned and painted and heated,—under the personal supervision of S. J.-B. and one or two friends, at small cost as regards money, but with lavish expenditure of brains and good will.
It was necessary, too, that hospital instruction should be provided, and to this end, S. J.-B. approached the authorities at Leith.
“The very large number of students at the Edinburgh Infirmary,” she wrote to Dr. Struthers, “make it almost impossible that women should there get opportunities of study, and (as there is no other suitable hospital of sufficient size in Edinburgh) I am anxious to ascertain whether the Directors of the Leith Hospital would entertain the idea of admitting them to opportunities of clinical study in their wards.
If so, I should be glad to make any arrangement as to fees that may be desired by the Directors; or if they preferred it would at once guarantee fees to the amount of 200 guineas yearly.”
Her application was warmly supported by Mr. R. Somerville, and others of the Directors, and after a long series of letters and interviews, the negotiation was completed.
“Every night I am quite as tired as is safe,” she wrote to Miss Irby, who had begged for a postcard, “and yet every day I have to omit half a dozen things that cry out to be done. However I do not mean to break down again, so I simply do what I can and leave the rest.”
Little by little the School became more of a corporate thing. A resident secretary was necessary, of course, so S. J.-B. hit on a likely person[152] and trained her. Caretakers (man and wife) were found to look after the premises. A library was provided, and, as soon as might be, anatomical and Materia Medica museums. No one who has not lived through the founding of a medical school can form the faintest idea how much it means. S. J.-B. had been over the ground before, and may be supposed to have realized what she was undertaking.
Footnote 152:
S. J.-B. never had a more loyal and devoted helper than the first secretary of the School, Miss Janet Black.
She had Dr. Balfour’s help from the first, and a tower of strength he proved: by degrees a committee was formed: but from first to last the responsibility rested to all intents and purposes on her shoulders.
The position, too, on which the whole thing rested was curious. The School was not recognized as such. Each lecturer was recognized individually. At any moment any lecturer in the Extra-Mural School was free to open a rival class and cut the ground from under S. J.- B.’s feet.
The new venture, moreover, had all the disadvantages inherent in a new creation. It had no senior students, none even, at first, who had gone through the wholesome discipline of the modern High School: it had no tradition. By the sheer necessities of the case, S. J.-B. was compelled to be senior student,—to be tradition.
For ten or more years the School did excellent work, but the instability of its foundation proved too great. Whether the “lion- hearted”[153] pioneer, with her extraordinary bent for arranging detail, could in any case have made a success of the venture, under such difficult conditions, when the heroic days of initiation were over, it is impossible to say. The reader will not need to be told— S. J.-B.’s bitterest opponent never denied—that she put into the venture infinitely more labour and sympathy and affection and brains than she need have done,—and there were those among the students who came near to appreciating these qualities as they deserved. But of course there were others—as at Mannheim of old—with whom a cheaper personality would better have served the turn.
Footnote 153:
The adjective is applied to her by Charles Reade in _The Woman Hater_.
For a year or two everyone was happy and contented, and then the crash of temperaments came. There is no need to tell the story in detail. Some of those concerned were young, and some were foolish, and there are some concerning whom one’s lips are sealed. The original difficulty was complicated by side issues that never could be fully threshed out. The actual story seems interminable, and sometimes insignificant enough, but the principle underlying it is of the real essence of tragedy. Enough to say that at the end of a year or two, S. J.-B. found herself confronted with a form of opposition which no one in authority would cheerfully have gone to meet,—a form of opposition peculiarly trying to one of her temperament. Supreme tact might have weathered the storm,—and it must always be remembered that, on many occasions in life, in this connection and in others,—she evidenced a tact that was all but supreme. In any case she failed here. Opposition classes were started in due course on a cheaper basis, classes in which the central controlling power was purely nominal. There was endless propaganda; some sort of organization was got together: everybody who had a grudge against S. J.-B. remembered it now; her faults, mistakes and deficiencies—particularly her want of enthusiasm for missions—came back relentlessly upon her head: and she found herself (as Thring has said of “every consistent worker on principle”), “put in the position of opposing what she had always worked for, and her opponents posing as the workers.” Professor Masson and Miss Louisa Stevenson, both of whom had considered the founding of a Scottish School at this moment premature, wrote to her in grim amusement at some of the names which now appeared in support of the cause.
Let it be conceded for all the concession is worth, that in a sense S. J.-B. brought the difficulty upon herself. Once again something was required of her which a smaller person could have given, but which she could not give. The tragic element lay in this that she never saw where she was at fault. She was conscious of an honest purpose and of unwearying unselfish endeavour. What more could one ask? So many people succeed who give much less than this! She even yielded on a good many points—when yielding was too late.
What strikes one most on looking back is the extraordinary loyalty with which most of the students rallied round her when the split came.
When one of the lecturers (who had striven, like so many others, to make “even a slight alteration” in her) congratulated her on the “brains” she had retained in the School, she responded characteristically:
“And the heart.”
“And the heart,” he agreed.
Some of the lecturers were even finer. “The terms you name are quite satisfactory,” wrote Dr. Aitken when things were at quite their worst, and S. J.-B. could no longer guarantee an adequate emolument. “I would take your students without fee of any kind before I would see you beat, so you need not let the matter give you any concern.”
And Dr. (now Professor) A. J. Thomson, when he heard she was leaving Edinburgh, wrote:
“I have always felt, if I may dare to say so, that your part has been like that of a general who won a great battle and then rode away, leaving the achievement with the ungrateful. Happily you know how many of us are neither ungrateful nor ignorant.”
But finest of all was the effect on S. J.-B. herself. She fought on, of course,—that was in the nature of her,—and loyal supporters were many;[154] but, although the long struggle to keep the better School going,—to get it improved, endowed, affiliated to the University of St. Andrews,—absolutely wore her out, she never became embittered and she never really lost her buoyancy. When Queen Margaret College opened a medical side in 1890, one might have thought it was the last straw, especially as it meant the removal of eight of her students whose homes were in or near Glasgow, but in this case her loss meant the progress of the cause, and she rejoiced in it wholeheartedly. It was delightful to see the happy terms on which she and Miss Galloway worked in sympathy until and beyond the final closing of the Edinburgh School.
Footnote 154:
The Marquis of Bute and Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff (Under Secretary for Scotland) are among the best-known names in the company of those who did their best to help her.
So she always retained her gallant front. If she thought sometimes of “that weary School” she never spoke so: she always saw in it the ideal of what it was going to be. Success was always just round the corner so to speak, all but within reach; but success, in the form in which she looked for it, never came.
Success there was, of course, “not its semblance, but itself.” Honest work always means success. The brief life of that School was the seed-time of much fine work that would otherwise never have been done. Its students have acquitted themselves nobly in many parts of the world. And on the principle that “he who watereth shall himself be watered,” it did much for S. J.-B. It gave her a little band of juniors who in some measure understood her, who responded to her ideals, who were proud to assist her and to reckon themselves her disciples. The interest she took in them individually was amazing. No trouble was too great that would forward their interests in any way. As the years went on, she seemed to forget herself altogether in their successes. She lived anew in their lives. Her whole nature grew and mellowed, though it could not change. And one is glad to record that never again to the end of life did she suffer the weeks and months of loneliness that had darkened the early days of her professional career.
V. RE-OPENING OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY TO WOMEN
It seemed better in the previous chapter to explain at once that, after a brief run of prosperity, the history of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was chequered by a long fight against heavy odds; but no one who visited the stirring bee-hive at Surgeon Square would have guessed at the struggle that underlay its cheerful aspect. And, fortunately, there were many strands in S. J.-B.’s life besides the struggle for her School. In a doctor’s experience there must always be much to interest and cheer, and S. J.-B.’s range was wider than that of the ordinary doctor. Editors were no less glad of her work than of old. In the autumn of 1887, she wrote to the Editor of the Nineteenth Century, offering him a paper on Medical Women which should supplement the one contributed by Mr. Stansfeld ten years before. Mr. Knowles replied immediately that he would be delighted to receive such a paper from her, and “the sooner the better.” The article duly appeared in November of that year.
At her little hospital she had a series of residents, some from the London School and some from her own, whom one can fairly describe as picked women,—keen and competent and loyal; and she enjoyed and appreciated these as they deserved. More and more, too, people sought her opinion and advice on every subject of real human interest. One doctor—a complete stranger—even wrote from far wilds to ask whether there was any lady studying in her School who she thought was likely to make him a suitable wife. He was coming home, but his leave was short, and he would be glad if she would save time by paving the way for him as far as possible. I am afraid the students never even heard of this opportunity!
How far she was from discouraging a true marriage may be gathered from the following letter to one of her former residents for whom she had designs in the way of more ambitious work, and who wrote in some trepidation to confess that she was engaged to be married:
“May 30, 1895.
DEAR MISS ——,
I was very glad to get your letter of March 10th, and very much interested in all your news. I may set your mind at rest by saying at once that I am not going to scold you about your engagement. I hold most strongly that ‘Love should still be Lord of all,’ and that if two good people love each other heartily in the right way, they ought to marry under almost all circumstances. I don’t believe in vows of celibacy for medical women any more than for any one else. Women are women before they are doctors.
At the same time I am afraid you are rather sanguine in hoping that you will be of more use in your profession married than single. It is not the husbands that are the obstacles to practice, but the babies. If a woman becomes a mother, I certainly think nothing outside her home can have, or ought to have, so much claim upon her as her children.
However I think it constantly happens that we plan out one kind of life for ourselves, and then that another is shaped out for us, and we must believe, if we believe in a God at all, that the wisdom that decides for us is greater than our own.
So long as we act up to our highest light, I think we need not trouble ourselves about results....
With all good wishes, believe me,
Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
That this was no new attitude on her part we learn from a letter written many years before to Miss Bertha Cordery. “You are quite right in thinking that I do not by any means as a matter of course congratulate people on their marriage, but when you say that ‘having met, no other result was possible,’ I think you express the essence of a good marriage with the terseness worthy of the distinguished historian.[155]”
Footnote 155:
The “distinguished historian” of course refers to Miss Cordery herself.
This seems the best place to say one word about the special interest S. J.-B. took in her Hindu students. The first of these, Annie Jagannadham, was a young woman of such fine and finished character that her early death, soon after her return to her native land, was a matter for infinite regret, but scarcely for surprise. When she qualified as a doctor, S. J.-B. wrote to the Spectator to point out the desirability of sending back Hindu women educated in England to minister to their own countrywomen; and her letter called forth a gratifying response from Mr. James Cropper of Ellergreen (who had been interested in S. J.-B.’s first application to the University of Edinburgh many years before) offering to found a scholarship for Hindu women at her school. This was accordingly done, and a series of Hindu students was the result. Differing from each other in many respects, they were alike in one thing, and that was a real gift for understanding and appreciating their Dean. They seemed to find the Mother side of her by a sort of instinct.
“I cannot tell you,” wrote one who had failed in an examination abroad, “how much your kind letter comforted me. When I was happy I wrote to other people; but when I was in distress I wrote to you and was soothed, for failure did not seem so hard when you were satisfied with my work.”
When Rukhmabai came to Edinburgh for her Final Professional Examination, she was S. J.-B.’s guest, and a strong mutual admiration and friendship was the result.
* * * * *
In accepting the chairmanship of the School, Dr. Balfour had made it almost a stipulation that S. J.-B. should personally undertake the teaching of Midwifery, and, in consequence of this, she was the first woman to be recognized as a lecturer in the Extra-Mural School. As a matter of fact, her special technical training was necessarily out of date. Dr. Balfour probably looked upon Midwifery mainly as a subject that successful physicians leave behind them, and did not realize that greater strides had been made in the teaching of this subject than in any other. However, S. J.-B. was a born teacher, as we know: she worked hard: and she had the able coöperation of the late Dr. Milne Murray, whose attitude towards her in this connection was one more of the splendid loyalties bound up in the story of her life.
And one cannot talk of loyalty without recalling a characteristic letter from Dr. Pechey, written when she received the news of S. J.- B.’s appointment:
“Hip Hip Hooray!! Hip Hip Hooray!!! Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!
In the very place where we were stoned and beaten 18 years ago. Well, I am glad to have lived to see the day. Just when your paper came, I was feeling life a burden.
Do you think they would let me lecture on something—Shakespeare or the musical glasses—when I come home if ever I do. When you want an assistant let me know.
I don’t know when I have felt so pleased and elated and especially that it should happen to you, it is so appropriate. Isn’t Mrs. Thorne very pleased and everybody else?...
Dear Sophy, I am so pleased, more than if some one had left me a million of money, though I do have to look hard at every anna now before letting it go!”
“Thanks for your very hearty congratulations,” S. J.-B. wrote in reply,—“... Selfishly, I regret it very much, for I have no idea how to find either the time or the strength (or knowledge) for the course, but I suppose I must just do the best I can.
Of course if you were here you could have the pick of the lecturerships in the School, and after one precedent, they couldn’t refuse to recognize you: but the pay would hardly keep your Highness in hairpins.”
The idea of having her old friend in Edinburgh dwelt in her mind nevertheless, and some time later—in May 1890—she wrote:
“By the bye if you do decide to leave India next year, and if it could possibly be made to fit in with Mr. Phipson’s plans,[156] I wish with all my heart that you could see your way to come and settle in Edinburgh, and take up with your splendid energy the very wide field in Scotland that is almost ripe to harvest. My strength is about spent, and besides you have elements of social success that I never should have. You are far more of a woman of the world and a far more able diplomatist. My Hospital will never develop in my tired hands, but I believe you might make a splendid thing of it; and at the same time I believe you would have a capital west-end practice almost immediately, and of course a lectureship if you cared to have it. Think this idea over thoroughly before you decide against it.
Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
Footnote 156:
Dr. Edith Pechey had married Mr. H. M. Phipson of Bombay.
The feeling that her time of work was drawing to an end was intensified by the news of the death of her friend, Dr. Lucy Sewall. This was the last heavy bereavement she had to face, and she took it hard. To her friend, Mrs. Brander, her “eldest daughter,” she had written a month or two before the above correspondence with Dr. Pechey:
“Feb. 27. 1890.
DEAREST BEL,
For the second time I have to send you terribly bad news. My dear friend, Dr. Sewall, has been as you know in bad health for the last 4 or 5 years, and last month she was seized with a very severe attack of bronchitis, from which she never regained strength, and she passed away ‘very peacefully’ on Feb. 13th.
Though I have seen so little of her for some years back, it is a great blow to me,—the greatest I have felt since 1881.
How I hope that she is again with the mother and father she loved so very dearly. Indeed she has never really rallied, I believe, from her father’s death (at 90) a year ago.
A whiter sweeter soul never lived, and her memory ‘smells sweet and blossoms in the dust.’
I cannot write more today, but I could not let you hear it from anyone else.
I hope you got the little book I sent you at Christmas. I could not write but it carried much affection to you.
Yours affectionately, S. J.-B.”
For the Englishwoman’s Review she wrote an account of this “strong and gentle soul,” quoting the lines Whittier had written about her ancestor. “I enclose the whole verse about Judge Sewall,” she says to the Editor, “in case you have room for it. It might almost word for word have been written of his far-away descendant.
‘Walks the Judge of the Great Assize, Samuel Sewall, the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honour and woman trust.’”
S. J.-B.’s hands might be tired, but the eye on the bridge was as keen as ever. She had been aiming from the first at some sort of reinforcement from St. Andrews, and in 1888 Lord Lothian’s Bill had seemed to open a new door of hope.
“May 10th. [1888.]
DEAR MR. STANSFELD,
The Bill of which I wrote is the ‘Universities (Scotland) Bill,’ which has been introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Lothian. I believe it has not yet come down to your House, but I am very anxious, when it does so, that attention should be directed to the clauses about women and about ‘affiliation of Colleges,’ which latter might solve our problem, e.g. if our Edinburgh School were affiliated to St. Andrews.
I shall be most grateful if you will talk about it beforehand with members likely to be interested, and if possible speak on it also.
Yours always gratefully, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
The previous day she had written,
“May 9th.
DEAR LORD ABERDARE,
I am extremely obliged for your very kind letter, and shall be most grateful if you can make Lord Lothian’s acquaintance, interest him in our subject, and introduce me to him. I am very anxious to secure his favourable attention, and that of the Commission, and I am sure that your introduction would give me the best possible chance. I am most anxious not to lose the present opportunity to bring our needs to the front.
With renewed thanks, Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”
When the Bill was passed and Commissioners appointed, she laid before them a memorial in support of the desired aims, and in June 1891 she was summoned to give evidence in person. On June 28th she wrote to Miss Du Pre:
“I had to appear before the University Commissioners last Wednesday, and if possible I will send you a proof of my examination. It was very satisfactory, as the Chairman (Lord Kinnear) said they were satisfied that it was desirable and necessary to give medical degrees to women in Scotland.”
To another friend she had written a week earlier,
“By the bye you will like to see the enclosed proof of my evidence last week before the Universities Commission. Miss E.-L. made me tell my class about it next day, and they clapped warmly; and then, after the lecture, as I was going out, they gave me another round. I stopped and said,—‘Oh, is that for Univ. Commission?’ ‘For you, Doctor!’ shouted Miss Moorhead.”
The whole matter, as is usual with such things, ran a leisurely course, for on April 27th, 1892, she writes again,
“... I had one very amusing experience on Monday. The Scottish Universities Commission has been issuing some ‘Ordinances’ to which serious objections are taken, and among others a flaw has been found in the Women’s Ordinance, which we want to have remedied. All the objecting bodies were to meet together, so Dr. Balfour and I were summoned by enclosed solemn document to appear to represent our School, and it was amusing to find myself an invited delegate, at whose entrance the Chairman rose and came forward with outstretched hand, in the awful University Court Room, where our case had over and over again been tried by a hostile authority, and lost, without an opportunity for a word in our own defence.
Sir Robert Christison looked down from the wall, and it made me almost chuckle to think what he would have said!
Sic transit! How the world moves!
I have just heard this morning of a legacy of £100 for our Hospital, and probably something for the School though (from vague wording) that is less certain.”
At this time the great hope—as so often in the past—lay in the direction of the University of St. Andrews, but the hope proved illusory once more. In reading the history, one feels again and again as if St. Andrews University had been surrounded by some strange magic circle, for it happened on numberless occasions that when everything seemed settled, and every difficulty had been laboriously overcome, some unsuspected link in the chain gave way, and endless exertion was rendered null and void. So it seems to have happened now, for in June 1894 we find S. J.-B. writing again to Miss Du Pre:
“I have been desperately busy this week, chiefly at the University or with University people, as circumstances have led to my very suddenly applying to have our School recognized by the [Edinburgh] University Court, which really seems possible, Calderwood and Watson both being members of it. The story is a long one, arising out of complications at St. Andrews.
I enclose a copy of my Memorial,—please return it. It comes up tomorrow before the Court.
Watson said so very kindly that he hoped it would pass, if only that I might have rest from my long labours,—wasn’t it sweet of him? A quarter of a century is a long time!”
So the old warrior gathered herself together once more and made a last appeal to the University Court of her own Alma Mater to grant to other women the privilege that could never now be her own. She reminded them that in 1869 the same Court had conceded the principle of admitting women to graduation in medicine, that that principle had never been disallowed by them, and that the problem of its practical accomplishment had been under the consideration of the Court ever since.
It cannot be said that hope ran high even now. It had always been a saying among Scottish students that Edinburgh would be the last stronghold to yield; but the tide everywhere was on the turn. After full consideration of the subject, the Court rose nobly to the spirit of the resolution passed by their predecessors in 1869, and in October 1894 made public their determination to admit women forthwith to graduation in medicine.
* * * * *
The National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women, which had done such excellent service after its foundation in 1871, had for some years ceased to exist; “At the present time many of its members had passed away, and others were widely scattered, but it seemed desirable to those women who had always been members of it, and who were still resident in Edinburgh, that some congratulation should be offered by them to Dr. Jex-Blake, for the great victory that had been achieved by her in the opening of the degrees of the University of Edinburgh to women after a struggle extending over exactly five-and-twenty years.”[157] So on Saturday, November 3rd, 1894, these honourable women met together and presented the following address:
“We, the undersigned, women members of the original National Association for the Medical Education of Women, resident at this time in Edinburgh, desire to offer to you our warm and hearty congratulations on the brilliant success you have achieved in securing the opening of the Edinburgh University medical examinations and degrees to women students. We know that it was largely due to your great ability and knowledge that the enabling Bill of 1876 was passed, which put it into the power, if they so willed, of each of the nineteen examining bodies of the United Kingdom to admit women to qualifying examinations, and which was the foundation of the success on which we congratulate you to-day. Many who worked with and under you in the old days have passed away. We who are left take this opportunity of expressing to you our appreciation of the great sacrifice you have made of time, and strength, and money, to win for younger women in their own country a complete medical education crowned by a degree. To have done this in Edinburgh we regard as a success of which you may be justly proud. (Signed)—Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Anne H. Calderwood, Grant A. Millar, Flora C. Stevenson, Phœbe Blyth, Sarah E. Siddons Mair, Emily Hodgson, Charlotte Geddes, Agnes Craig, Anne B. Foster, Hannah Lorimer, M. G. Paton, Priscilla Bright M‘Laren, Elizabeth Stuart Blackie, Elisa Carlile Stevenson, Mina Kunz, C. M. Charteris, Margaret Wyld, Eliza Wigham, Jessie M. Wellstood, Euphemia Millar, Eliza Scott Kirkland, Maggie A. Rose, Augusta G. Wyld, Helen Brown, A. A. Skelton, C. M. Edington, A. Edington, Amelia R. Hill, Mary Burton, Louisa Stevenson.—9th October, 1894.”
Footnote 157:
The quotation is from Miss Louisa Stevenson’s speech in presenting the address.
Before leaving the subject of S. J.-B.’s active life in Edinburgh, it may be well to sum up some of her main characteristics as a doctor and as a citizen, though to a great extent these have already become evident.
First, was her great deftness in any kind of manipulation. It was interesting to see her outshine in this respect so many of the trig and dainty women who at one time or another, worked under her.
Second, was her readiness in emergency. The grass never grew under her feet. It is on record that she had finished some minor operation before her anaesthetist knew that she had begun. An amusing instance of her readiness occurs in a chance episode with her carriage- builder. It was not unusual for her to have little rubs with this man. He and his subordinates had difficulty in living up to her ideas of punctuality, and no doubt they considered her a bit of a nuisance.
One day she called to remonstrate about something and found “the Governor” in great distress from a splinter of steel which had become imbedded in his eye.
“I’ll take it out for you,” she said, and, turning to the men, added, “Bring a chair.”
The chair was placed by her direction in the best light obtainable, i.e. on the gallery surrounding the carriage yard, in full view of the men and horses below. She made the patient sit down, and, standing behind him, produced a surgical needle from her instrument case and with its curved convex edge deftly removed the splinter.
It was all done in the twinkling of an eye. Very simple, but very characteristic.
And it would have been awkward if she had failed.
Third, was her refusal to let a patient die. No doctor wishes to lose a case, but with S. J.-B. it was a matter of definite personal struggle.
One day in the comparatively early days of practice, she came in very late to lunch, having been urgently detained with a private patient. She was anxious about a case in her little hospital—a surgical case which had developed medical complications—and she sent a messenger down for news.
“Just sinking,” was the pencilled reply from the resident. “Dr. —— and Dr. —— [the consultants] have been here, and have given her up. We have ceased to worry her with food.”
“Ceased to worry her with food!” One saw the summer lightnings on S. J.-B.’s forehead. “Tell Charles to bring the brougham round immediately.” Within half an hour the beef-tea was being administered by her own hand; and there was no more talk of “not worrying the patient with food.” She was worried until she not only rallied, but got her foot on to the ladder of a slow and sure recovery, a recovery that meant just everything to the husband and children who were anxiously awaiting the mother’s return to the little home.
As a neighbour and citizen S. J.-B. had certain outstanding qualités, which, with their corresponding défauts, have never tended to make the possessor of them universally popular. She considered it a public duty to uphold as far as lay in one person’s power the general standard of proper behaviour and efficiency in the community. She had no use for sluggards and shirkers. “Here’s the Doctor,—mind yersel’!” a cabman was heard to say when he and a gossiping mate had allowed their vehicles to sprawl right across the highroad just as the familiar pony-chaise came in sight. No postal service ever deteriorated in her vicinity. If lesser officials failed to listen, she appealed to the Postmaster-General, and she accomplished many minor reforms by which her neighbours profited as much as she did herself. Assuredly she was no grumbler, but she considered that those who make it their aim to slip smoothly through life, leaving to others all the irksome work of protesting, are—to say the least—acting an unheroic part. She agreed that all things come to him who waits,—and come through the exertions of those who have not been content merely to wait. The callow upstart official was apt to fare badly at her hands, but if the official happened to be an elderly woman at—say—some isolated country post office, one saw S. J.-B. at her best. She would steer the way gently and patiently through some simple transaction that seemed involved enough in those wilds; and, if she was met by a flash of interest and intelligence, her appreciation was great. “Why we’ll make you Postmaster-General!” she has been heard to say, leaving a beaming face behind her as she gathered up the reins and drove away,—a visitant indeed from another world.
VI. DRIVING TOURS. ANIMAL FRIENDS
All through the years of work and conflict, S. J.-B. had looked forward to her “Sabbatical year,” when, with a clear conscience, she could retire from active life, and share with others the rest and seclusion she longed for. As early as 1892 she had written to a cousin in New Zealand about a visit from her brother, who had been examining at Fettes:
“Today he is gone south again. His life at Wells must be very quiet and restful after the hard work of Rugby.
I am beginning to think that I must soon wind up my work and rest. I have worked about as hard as anybody could for more than thirty years, and I think I have almost done my share. There are young people coming up now to do the medical work,—we have about 130 women on the British Register,—in 1865 when I began to work there was only one!”
Some months later she seems to have written in the same vein to the old aunt in Norfolk, for Mrs. Gunton replies in a holograph letter of four beautifully-written pages:
“You must not talk of being tired with your occupation at present. Consider what a chicken you are! On the 11th of November I was 93.”
How difficult to find any ground of comparison between those two lives, grown on the same stock, the one of 52 and the other of 93!
* * * * *
The opening of the University degrees to women cleared the ground a good deal, but there were still three great difficulties in the way of retirement. The first was the Hospital. S. J.-B. was aware, as she had written to Dr. Pechey that it “never would develop in her tired hands,” but before passing it over to her juniors, she was anxious to use her name and influence for all they were worth in the way of raising money to constitute a small endowment, and justify building, or at least a removal to larger premises. “The one thing that I do long for still,” she wrote, “is to see a thoroughly good Women’s Hospital officered by women established in Edinburgh.”
On the whole it was hard work. She wrote many letters in vain, but, little by little, she gathered a few thousands: and there were, as usual, some pleasant surprises by the way. Her old friend, Mrs. Arthur, when asked for £100, promptly responded with a cheque for £500, and some of those who gave little gave with a few words of gratitude and appreciation that lifted the gift quite out of the region of shillings and pounds.
A greater obstacle, perhaps, than the Hospital was the sheer difficulty of winding up and getting away. S. J.-B. had begun life as an early Victorian girl with an exceptionally strong hereditary tendency to store and treasure all sorts of things great and small. Almost in the twinkling of an eye she became a modern woman with a correspondence that ran to dozens—sometimes hundreds—of letters in a day,—a modern woman with no leisure at all for the always distasteful work of weeding out and destroying. She was always giving, but she never seemed to give away the things of which she would be well rid. Moreover she always did things on a massive, great-spirited scale. If a number of copies of any document were wanted, it was better to get it printed,—and, if you were getting it printed, it was safer and cheaper to get 500 or 1000 copies while the type was up. You never knew how important that particular document might become. If any article was nearly worn out, buy a new one by all means,—but keep the old one too in case the new one should break down.
And so it came about that in her roomy old house, with its spacious attics and cellars, things were stored and stacked and forgotten until their volume was almost incredible to those who had not seen it.
And finally there was the great question where to settle. She never lost her love for Edinburgh, and she was often tempted to choose a house on the outskirts. On the other hand, she had always dreamed of growing figs and peaches on a sunny south wall in her beloved native county of Sussex: and how was she to find just the right house in Sussex? So the time slipped away, and she had one illness after another, and it often seemed to those nearest her as if the Sabbatical year would be spent on the other Side of the River.
She took holidays more and more frequently, however, and rejoiced increasingly in the work of those who took her place. “My daughters,” “my girls,” “my young doctors,”—how proudly she used to say it! Her face the day five of them were “capped” at the University was a thing to be seen. And if she was an absolutely un- self-sparing worker, she knew better than most how to make holiday; indeed her holidays were as characteristic as everything else she did and was. She hated publicity, hated the noise and bustle of trains, so a driving-tour was her ideal of happiness and refreshment. Her chaise had been specially built for the purpose, with space in front of the dash-board to accommodate two small valises, abundant room under the seats, and other incidental conveniences that one only discovered by degrees. Little by little she had made a fine art of her preparations. The list of compact necessaries was always at hand, and the so-called “work-box” alone contained in a condensed form resources for emergencies of all descriptions. The groom had his own kit behind, and woe betide him if his tools were not at hand when a shoe came loose or a nut needed screwing up.
The strain of packing was apt to be considerable for everyone concerned, and it lasted for the first mile or two of the journey. Then gradually it melted away. She would draw a deep breath and give herself up to the delightful sense of freedom. “Oh, isn’t it good to be away!” “It seemed yesterday as if we never should get off.”
She always elected to go for the first night or two, if possible, to an inn she knew. She asked so little, but it had to be just the particular little that she wanted. No “much” could take the place of that.
“Thank you, that is very nice,” she would say breezily, after surveying the rooms in some unknown inn where she hoped to stay for more than a night. “Now will you open the windows, and give us both some more towels and one or two little tables, and take away the ornaments in the sitting-room. We want room for our books.”
Sometimes the people were aghast, but much, much more often they entered into the spirit of the thing and gave her just what she wanted. She had a great knack of carrying them with her. She was so easy-going in most ways, “because of course,” as she used to explain, “one is not responsible for inn servants as one is for one’s own.” And some few inns became to her a real haven of refuge,— Rumbling Bridge, under old Mrs. Macara; Fortingal, in the old days, under Mr. and Mrs. Menzies; and—above all latterly—(under Mrs. Beattie), her beloved Gordon Arms at Yarrow where she and Miss Du Pre had perforce taken refuge one day in a storm, little thinking what a sanctuary it was often to prove.
“Yarrow, with all its snows and storms, has answered splendidly for both of us,” she writes to Miss Du Pre in April 1896, “and we shall return on Saturday much refreshed and strengthened. I have been walking a good deal as well as driving. There seems something specially restful about this country,—and this inn is as good as old Fortingal, in rather a different way.”
The showy inn where one got no real comforts and where the cooking was bad, was of course the object of her special detestation.
Many times she drove all over Perthshire; she went as far north as Loch Maree, and, on one occasion at least, she drove all the way from Brighton to Edinburgh arriving, by the way, to find a patient on the door-step, and that patient a dowager countess! As a rule the horse and chaise were put on the train from Carlisle to Rugby.
And the woods and hills seemed the very home of her spirit. More than anything else they brought the poetry to her lips,—Whittier’s My Psalm very frequently in later years,—she did so love those “robes of praise”—and his Autograph too,—
“Hater of din and riot, He lived in days unquiet—”
But always most frequently of all, perhaps, Mrs. Browning’s couplet,—
“The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number, And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.”
Of course there were hardships to be faced too,—as one reckoned hardships in those days! Often the rain came down in sheets when one was half way across a shelterless mountain pass; or one drove unexpectedly into deeper and deeper snow till it even happened that the groom had to borrow a spade from a neighbouring cottage, and dig a way out of the drift. Not infrequently night came on before a suitable inn had been found,—for it is by no means every country inn that has stabling,—let alone a lock-up coach-house,—and one drove mile after mile with a tired horse and diminishing hopes.
In all such minor emergencies the indomitable spirit rose to meet the occasion. One well nigh forgot the ageing woman and saw only the gallant-hearted boy. She loved driving across a ford, though in some of the Highland rivers it is highly desirable, if not necessary, to know the lie of the ground beneath, and to choose just the right détour or zig-zag.
In the neighbourhood of Woking one day when the floods were out, she stopped to ask the way, and was informed that the route she proposed to take was under water and dangerous. It would have been awkward to change plans at that stage, so S. J.-B. drove on, though the water gradually rose above the axles.
Presently a meek voice was heard from the groom behind. “He said it was dangerous.” But S. J.-B. did not hear.
She was never foolhardy, but she did love the off-chance of an adventure, and there would have been danger often if her nerve had given way, or if she had not had a thorough understanding with her horse. In the moment of emergency one saw what excellent comrades they were. She knew how to get the last ounce of pluck and endurance out of him in case of need.
It was all made up to him when the strain was over! That hot mash on reaching the inn was the first thing thought of, and on a trying day there was always a snack of some sort for the groom before the inn was reached, so that the thought of his own supper might not bulk too largely in his general view of life and duty.
She was the friend of all her horses, and was never happy with one that failed to respond. Blinkers and bearing-reins were an abomination to her. She even objected to brass, and refused to use the smart be-crested harness that came to her from her father’s stable.
Her first favourite was White Angel, a pony. Professor Wilson had helped her to choose him for a driving-tour in her student days. She hired him several times and finally bought him. When she was at Berne for her degree, he lived in her Mother’s stable at Brighton. “Angel and Turk send their duty,” Mrs. Jex-Blake used to write. “Master Turk says, ‘Very dull Christmas without Missis. He don’t think much of Switzerland.’”
White Angel was badly named,—he was a lovable creature, but far more of a sprite than an angel. There was never any harm in his mischief, and she used to recount his pranks with the greatest delight. Above all things he hated to be beaten. Going up Corstorphine Hill, he would not allow even a pair of horses to pass him. He would allow them to come close up, and then he would throw up his heels and race to the top as if the chaise had been a nut-shell. And she enjoyed his spirit far too much to check him.
He continued this practice up to a period of life when most creatures place comfort above such expensive luxuries; but there came a time when he had to give in. Then, as he heard younger hoofs gaining on him, he would turn his head with great dignity and look the other way, refusing to see that he was being outdone.
Very early in the days of practice, Blackbird came to reinforce him, replacing a smarter, more troublesome horse whom S. J.-B. passed on to Dr. Pechey: and on the whole Blackbird was her dearest horse friend. He was such a gentleman, so willing to coöperate with her, and if necessary to exert himself only too much on those occasional long days in the Highlands. She never could see that he was growing old and ceasing to be a credit to her,—indeed she seldom could see that of anything she had cared for. No flower that had brightened her writing-table was allowed to spend its last hour on an ash-heap. So Blackbird remained king of the stable, doing an occasional easy job, till the remonstrances of S. J.-B.’s friends prevailed against even that, and he was lent to a farmer friend to fill an easy place in the country.
Everyone meant well and kindly, but the farmer lent him after a time to a less soft-hearted dairyman, and one day when S. J.-B. went out to visit her old friend, she found him rheumatic and broken-kneed and lean. She said scarcely a word, but asked to be left with him in the stable. She had taken out a feed of beans, Blackbird’s special weakness, and she gave him the feeding-bag herself,—then put her arms round his neck and sobbed.
A day or two later Blackbird went to whatever place is reserved for such good and faithful friends.
There was Austral, too, the favourite of her later years,—a gentleman in every sense of the word,—his father and mother both in the Australian stud-book. The father was Oxford, the mother Uproarious, and the colt had been cleverly named Undergraduate. It was S. J.-B. who changed his name: she probably thought it inappropriate to a horse of eight or nine years; and indeed it was a word that for her was too full of associations.
No other animal came anywhere near horses in her estimation. Cats she disliked. In the old student days she had gone to see Miss Pechey at the home of the lady whose children were fortunate enough to have her for their governess. In the course of dinner, a spoiled and cherished family cat leapt gently on to the table, coming between S. J.-B. and the person to whom she was talking. Without stopping to think, S. J.-B. put out her arm and brushed the cat on to the floor.
When, some thirty years later, she was recalling how she had wondered whether so pretty a girl as Miss Pechey could have nerve enough to study medicine, and how she had been informed by one who knew that the pretty girl was “calm as an ox,” Mrs. Pechey Phipson grimly intervened,—“I assure you I was anything but calm when you swept that cat on to the floor!”
S. J.-B. laughed. And her laugh was a thing to hear,—especially when the old jokes and the old stories were recalled,—a hearty musical laugh that brought such wholesome tears to her eyes, and that would not allow her face to set into really tragic lines.
But there is something more to be said about her dislike to cats. After lunch at Bruntsfield Lodge, it was her custom to gather up the bits of bread that were left and take them out to the lawn to feed the birds. She loved to see the creatures flying towards her the moment she appeared, and no cat was ever tolerated in the grounds.
One evening in early summer, when she came in from her work to a high-walled garden all shimmering with promise, a half-grown kitten stood in the way. “Shoo!” said S. J.-B. “Go away! Who allowed that cat to be here?”
Everyone trembled,—except the little intruder. It looked S. J.-B. full in the face, and held its ground.
Of course it was turned out, but a few days later she saw it in the same place, leaping at a moth in the sunshine. And that time nothing was said.
And a few days later still, when she had passed beyond the garden into the house, the kitten walked forward to meet her. This really was too much; but when she protested, the kitten simply looked in her face and smiled.
So it was allowed to remain under due restrictions, until one night S. J.-B. was awakened by a loud sneeze. She struck a light, and there, on the shoulder of the sofa at the foot of her bed, calmly reposing on a big woollen shawl, with its eyes fixed on her in gentle protest against the open window, was the kitten.
It was simply uncanny. Of course it was only a kitten, but to S. J.- B. it was always more. “It must have known me in a previous incarnation,” she said. So she called it Karma, and before many days were over it was a favoured and lovable member of the household, taking all sorts of liberties in the most attractive way, and even lying unforbidden on her lap. “Li’l cat!” she used to say affectionately.
There is one more animal friend worth recalling, though pedigree and admirers he had none,—the Nameless Dog at Bordighera.
S. J.-B. had gone to Bordighera in the winter of 1897-98 with a friend who had been ill, and greatly did she enjoy the almost unfailing sunshine. She seldom made acquaintances under such conditions, but two delightful Irish ladies proved irresistible, and a pleasant partie carrée was the result. Every day S. J.-B. used to walk with one or other of her friends through the unlovely main street and sit for hours on the rocks at the Cap, watching the waves tumbling about on that fine bit of coast.
One day, in passing through the somewhat squalid town, she was stopped by a brawl among a few dogs,—a poor half-starved pariah was being set upon and robbed of some morsel it had contrived to pick up. Never was a more unwholesome-looking object than that dog,—with a coat utterly out of condition,—wounds in every stage of refusal to heal,—and an eye so mauled and battered that only a sanguine prognosis could have associated it with the idea of any special function in the future. The poor wretch showed no fight, but slunk away as soon as its tormentors would let it go,—a pitiful craven, utterly beaten in the struggle for life.
Next day it was seen again, slinking about in some bye-way, afraid of everyone who came near. Of course S. J.-B. had a crust in her pocket, and of course the dog got that crust, in spite of rivals and in spite of its own groundless fears. Next day it was looking out, and from that day the crust never failed. Little by little the natural vitality of the creature began to gain ground; he became something like a dog, and able to hold his own. His wounds healed, and he soon could forage a bit for himself; but he never forgot to look out for S. J.-B., and he never refused her crust. He began to walk with her to the Cap, and to lie at a respectful distance till she was ready to go home.
One day when she was confined to the house, he appeared on the steps of the hotel. The waiter of course gave him a greeting that in former times would have driven him well on the road to San Remo; but now he held his ground. “What on earth does he want?” said the man. “Oh,” said one of the others, “it’s Miss Blake’s dog.” At that moment S. J.-B. came downstairs to déjeuner. She fetched him half her roll from the dining-room, and the waiters might grumble as they pleased.
From that time the dog formally constituted himself her body-guard, and quite a creditable body-guard he was, with two good keen eyes always on the look-out, and a coat worth wearing. He had positively acquired a “presence.” He waited for her every day at the hotel gate, and he walked proudly in front of her to the Cap. No other dog dared to come near. No beggar ventured to molest. The very purveyors of inlaid jewellery had to keep their distance.
At last—just before she left the Riviera—the Nameless Dog secured a large bit of strongly smelling fish. There would have been a free fight for it in the early days, but no other dog disputed his possession of it now. He can’t have been overfed, poor fellow, even then; but he brought his coveted trophy to S. J.-B. in triumph, and laid it at her feet.
I am afraid he missed her horribly, and of course she could not explain to him and say Goodbye,—as no doubt she did to Blackbird. But she left behind a creature able to stand on his own legs, and show a brave face to the world: I am not sure that she didn’t leave behind the germ of a soul.
And, while this little story is scrupulously true, it tells in a humble parable many episodes in the life of S. J.-B. that were known to very few.