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.

CHAPTER V

RE-OPENING OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY TO WOMEN

It seemed better in the previous chapter to explain at once that,

after a brief run of prosperity, the history of the Edinburgh School

of Medicine for Women was chequered by a long fight against heavy

odds; but no one who visited the stirring bee-hive at Surgeon Square

would have guessed at the struggle that underlay its cheerful

aspect. And, fortunately, there were many strands in S. J.-B.’s life

besides the struggle for her School. In a doctor’s experience there

must always be much to interest and cheer, and S. J.-B.’s range was

wider than that of the ordinary doctor. Editors were no less glad of

her work than of old. In the autumn of 1887, she wrote to the Editor

of the _Nineteenth Century_, offering him a paper on Medical Women

which should supplement the one contributed by Mr. Stansfeld ten

years before. Mr. Knowles replied immediately that he would be

delighted to receive such a paper from her, and “the sooner the

better.” The article duly appeared in November of that year.

At her little hospital she had a series of residents, some from the

London School and some from her own, whom one can fairly describe as

picked women,—keen and competent and loyal; and she enjoyed and

appreciated these as they deserved. More and more, too, people

sought her opinion and advice on every subject of real human

interest. One doctor—a complete stranger—even wrote from far wilds

to ask whether there was any lady studying in her School who she

thought was likely to make him a suitable wife. He was coming home,

but his leave was short, and he would be glad if she would save time

by paving the way for him as far as possible. I am afraid the

students never even heard of this opportunity!

How far she was from discouraging a true marriage may be gathered

from the following letter to one of her former residents for whom

she had designs in the way of more ambitious work, and who wrote in

some trepidation to confess that she was engaged to be married:

“May 30, 1895.

DEAR MISS ——,

I was very glad to get your letter of March 10th, and very

much interested in all your news. I may set your mind at rest by

saying at once that I am not going to scold you about your

engagement. I hold most strongly that ‘Love should still be Lord

of all,’ and that if two good people love each other heartily in

the right way, they ought to marry under almost all circumstances.

I don’t believe in vows of celibacy for medical women any more

than for any one else. Women are women before they are doctors.

At the same time I am afraid you are rather sanguine in hoping

that you will be of more use in your profession married than

single. It is not the husbands that are the obstacles to practice,

but the babies. If a woman becomes a mother, I certainly think

nothing outside her home can have, or ought to have, so much claim

upon her as her children.

However I think it constantly happens that we plan out one kind of

life for ourselves, and then that another is shaped out for us,

and we must believe, if we believe in a God at all, that the

wisdom that decides for us is greater than our own.

So long as we act up to our highest light, I think we need not

trouble ourselves about results....

With all good wishes, believe me,

Yours sincerely,

S. JEX-BLAKE.”

That this was no new attitude on her part we learn from a letter

written many years before to Miss Bertha Cordery. “You are quite

right in thinking that I do not by any means as a matter of course

congratulate people on their marriage, but when you say that ‘having

met, no other result was possible,’ I think you express the essence

of a good marriage with the terseness worthy of the distinguished

historian.[155]”

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.

CHAPTER VI

DRIVING TOURS. ANIMAL FRIENDS

All through the years of work and conflict, S. J.-B. had looked

forward to her “Sabbatical year,” when, with a clear conscience, she

could retire from active life, and share with others the rest and

seclusion she longed for. As early as 1892 she had written to a

cousin in New Zealand about a visit from her brother, who had been

examining at Fettes:

“Today he is gone south again. His life at Wells must be very

quiet and restful after the hard work of Rugby.

I am beginning to think that I must soon wind up my work and rest.

I have worked about as hard as anybody could for more than thirty

years, and I think I have almost done my share. There are young

people coming up now to do the medical work,—we have about 130

women on the British Register,—in 1865 when I began to work there

was only _one_!”

Some months later she seems to have written in the same vein to the

old aunt in Norfolk, for Mrs. Gunton replies in a holograph letter

of four beautifully-written pages:

“You must not talk of being tired with your occupation at

_present_. Consider what a _chicken_ you are! On the 11th of

November I was 93.”

How difficult to find any ground of comparison between those two

lives, grown on the same stock, the one of 52 and the other of 93!

* * * * *

The opening of the University degrees to women cleared the ground a

good deal, but there were still three great difficulties in the way

of retirement. The first was the Hospital. S. J.-B. was aware, as

she had written to Dr. Pechey that it “never would develop in her

tired hands,” but before passing it over to her juniors, she was

anxious to use her name and influence for all they were worth in the

way of raising money to constitute a small endowment, and justify

building, or at least a removal to larger premises. “The one thing

that I do long for still,” she wrote, “is to see a thoroughly good

Women’s Hospital officered by women established in Edinburgh.”

On the whole it was hard work. She wrote many letters in vain, but,

little by little, she gathered a few thousands: and there were, as

usual, some pleasant surprises by the way. Her old friend, Mrs.

Arthur, when asked for £100, promptly responded with a cheque for

£500, and some of those who gave little gave with a few words of

gratitude and appreciation that lifted the gift quite out of the

region of shillings and pounds.

A greater obstacle, perhaps, than the Hospital was the sheer

difficulty of winding up and getting away. S. J.-B. had begun life

as an early Victorian girl with an exceptionally strong hereditary

tendency to store and treasure all sorts of things great and small.

Almost in the twinkling of an eye she became a modern woman with a

correspondence that ran to dozens—sometimes hundreds—of letters in a

day,—a modern woman with no leisure at all for the always

distasteful work of weeding out and destroying. She was always

giving, but she never seemed to give away the things of which she

would be well rid. Moreover she always did things on a massive,

great-spirited scale. If a number of copies of any document were

wanted, it was better to get it printed,—and, if you were getting it

printed, it was safer and cheaper to get 500 or 1000 copies while

the type was up. You never knew how important that particular

document might become. If any article was nearly worn out, buy a new

one by all means,—but keep the old one too in case the new one

should break down.

And so it came about that in her roomy old house, with its spacious

attics and cellars, things were stored and stacked and forgotten

until their volume was almost incredible to those who had not seen

it.

And finally there was the great question where to settle. She never

lost her love for Edinburgh, and she was often tempted to choose a

house on the outskirts. On the other hand, she had always dreamed of

growing figs and peaches on a sunny south wall in her beloved native

county of Sussex: and how was she to find just the right house in

Sussex? So the time slipped away, and she had one illness after

another, and it often seemed to those nearest her as if the

Sabbatical year would be spent on the other Side of the River.

She took holidays more and more frequently, however, and rejoiced

increasingly in the work of those who took her place. “My

daughters,” “my girls,” “my young doctors,”—how proudly she used to

say it! Her face the day five of them were “capped” at the

University was a thing to be seen. And if she was an absolutely un-

self-sparing worker, she knew better than most how to make holiday;

indeed her holidays were as characteristic as everything else she

did and was. She hated publicity, hated the noise and bustle of

trains, so a driving-tour was her ideal of happiness and

refreshment. Her chaise had been specially built for the purpose,

with space in front of the dash-board to accommodate two small

valises, abundant room under the seats, and other incidental

conveniences that one only discovered by degrees. Little by little

she had made a fine art of her preparations. The list of compact

necessaries was always at hand, and the so-called “work-box” alone

contained in a condensed form resources for emergencies of all

descriptions. The groom had his own kit behind, and woe betide him

if his tools were not at hand when a shoe came loose or a nut needed

screwing up.

The strain of packing was apt to be considerable for everyone

concerned, and it lasted for the first mile or two of the journey.

Then gradually it melted away. She would draw a deep breath and give

herself up to the delightful sense of freedom. “Oh, isn’t it good to

be away!” “It seemed yesterday as if we never should get off.”

She always elected to go for the first night or two, if possible, to

an inn she knew. She asked so little, but it had to be just the

particular little that she wanted. No “much” could take the place of

that.

“Thank you, that is very nice,” she would say breezily, after

surveying the rooms in some unknown inn where she hoped to stay for

more than a night. “Now will you open the windows, and give us both

some more towels and one or two little tables, and take away the

ornaments in the sitting-room. We want room for our books.”

Sometimes the people were aghast, but much, much more often they

entered into the spirit of the thing and gave her just what she

wanted. She had a great knack of carrying them with her. She was so

easy-going in most ways, “because of course,” as she used to

explain, “one is not responsible for inn servants as one is for

one’s own.” And some few inns became to her a real haven of refuge,—

Rumbling Bridge, under old Mrs. Macara; Fortingal, in the old days,

under Mr. and Mrs. Menzies; and—above all latterly—(under Mrs.

Beattie), her beloved Gordon Arms at Yarrow where she and Miss Du

Pre had perforce taken refuge one day in a storm, little thinking

what a sanctuary it was often to prove.

“Yarrow, with all its snows and storms, has answered splendidly

for both of us,” she writes to Miss Du Pre in April 1896, “and we

shall return on Saturday much refreshed and strengthened. I have

been walking a good deal as well as driving. There seems something

specially restful about this country,—and this inn is as good as

old Fortingal, in rather a different way.”

The showy inn where one got no real comforts and where the cooking

was bad, was of course the object of her special detestation.

Many times she drove all over Perthshire; she went as far north as

Loch Maree, and, on one occasion at least, she drove all the way

from Brighton to Edinburgh arriving, by the way, to find a patient

on the door-step, and that patient a dowager countess! As a rule the

horse and chaise were put on the train from Carlisle to Rugby.

And the woods and hills seemed the very home of her spirit. More

than anything else they brought the poetry to her lips,—Whittier’s

_My Psalm_ very frequently in later years,—she did so love those

“robes of praise”—and his _Autograph_ too,—

“Hater of din and riot,

He lived in days unquiet—”

But always most frequently of all, perhaps, Mrs. Browning’s

couplet,—

“The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number,

And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.”

Of course there were hardships to be faced too,—as one reckoned

hardships in those days! Often the rain came down in sheets when one

was half way across a shelterless mountain pass; or one drove

unexpectedly into deeper and deeper snow till it even happened that

the groom had to borrow a spade from a neighbouring cottage, and dig

a way out of the drift. Not infrequently night came on before a

suitable inn had been found,—for it is by no means every country inn

that has stabling,—let alone a lock-up coach-house,—and one drove

mile after mile with a tired horse and diminishing hopes.

In all such minor emergencies the indomitable spirit rose to meet

the occasion. One well nigh forgot the ageing woman and saw only the

gallant-hearted boy. She loved driving across a ford, though in some

of the Highland rivers it is highly desirable, if not necessary, to

know the lie of the ground beneath, and to choose just the right

détour or zig-zag.

In the neighbourhood of Woking one day when the floods were out, she

stopped to ask the way, and was informed that the route she proposed

to take was under water and dangerous. It would have been awkward to

change plans at that stage, so S. J.-B. drove on, though the water

gradually rose above the axles.

Presently a meek voice was heard from the groom behind. “He said it

was dangerous.” But S. J.-B. did not hear.

She was never foolhardy, but she did love the off-chance of an

adventure, and there would have been danger often if her nerve had

given way, or if she had not had a thorough understanding with her

horse. In the moment of emergency one saw what excellent comrades

they were. She knew how to get the last ounce of pluck and endurance

out of him in case of need.

It was all made up to him when the strain was over! That hot mash on

reaching the inn was the first thing thought of, and on a trying day

there was always a snack of some sort for the groom before the inn

was reached, so that the thought of his own supper might not bulk

_too_ largely in his general view of life and duty.

She was the friend of all her horses, and was never happy with one

that failed to respond. Blinkers and bearing-reins were an

abomination to her. She even objected to brass, and refused to use

the smart be-crested harness that came to her from her father’s

stable.

Her first favourite was White Angel, a pony. Professor Wilson had

helped her to choose him for a driving-tour in her student days. She

hired him several times and finally bought him. When she was at

Berne for her degree, he lived in her Mother’s stable at Brighton.

“Angel and Turk send their duty,” Mrs. Jex-Blake used to write.

“Master Turk says, ‘Very dull Christmas without Missis. He don’t

think much of Switzerland.’”

White Angel was badly named,—he was a lovable creature, but far more

of a sprite than an angel. There was never any harm in his mischief,

and she used to recount his pranks with the greatest delight. Above

all things he hated to be beaten. Going up Corstorphine Hill, he

would not allow even a pair of horses to pass him. He would allow

them to come close up, and then he would throw up his heels and race

to the top as if the chaise had been a nut-shell. And she enjoyed

his spirit far too much to check him.

He continued this practice up to a period of life when most

creatures place comfort above such expensive luxuries; but there

came a time when he had to give in. Then, as he heard younger hoofs

gaining on him, he would turn his head with great dignity and look

the other way, refusing to see that he was being outdone.

Very early in the days of practice, Blackbird came to reinforce him,

replacing a smarter, more troublesome horse whom S. J.-B. passed on

to Dr. Pechey: and on the whole Blackbird was her dearest horse

friend. He was such a gentleman, so willing to coöperate with her,

and if necessary to exert himself only too much on those occasional

long days in the Highlands. She never could see that he was growing

old and ceasing to be a credit to her,—indeed she seldom could see

that of anything she had cared for. No flower that had brightened

her writing-table was allowed to spend its last hour on an ash-heap.

So Blackbird remained king of the stable, doing an occasional easy

job, till the remonstrances of S. J.-B.’s friends prevailed against

even that, and he was lent to a farmer friend to fill an easy place

in the country.

Everyone meant well and kindly, but the farmer lent him after a time

to a less soft-hearted dairyman, and one day when S. J.-B. went out

to visit her old friend, she found him rheumatic and broken-kneed

and lean. She said scarcely a word, but asked to be left with him in

the stable. She had taken out a feed of beans, Blackbird’s special

weakness, and she gave him the feeding-bag herself,—then put her

arms round his neck and sobbed.

A day or two later Blackbird went to whatever place is reserved for

such good and faithful friends.

There was Austral, too, the favourite of her later years,—a

gentleman in every sense of the word,—his father and mother both in

the Australian stud-book. The father was Oxford, the mother

Uproarious, and the colt had been cleverly named Undergraduate. It

was S. J.-B. who changed his name: she probably thought it

inappropriate to a horse of eight or nine years; and indeed it was a

word that for her was too full of associations.

No other animal came anywhere near horses in her estimation. Cats

she disliked. In the old student days she had gone to see Miss

Pechey at the home of the lady whose children were fortunate enough

to have her for their governess. In the course of dinner, a spoiled

and cherished family cat leapt gently on to the table, coming

between S. J.-B. and the person to whom she was talking. Without

stopping to think, S. J.-B. put out her arm and brushed the cat on

to the floor.

When, some thirty years later, she was recalling how she had

wondered whether so pretty a girl as Miss Pechey _could_ have nerve

enough to study medicine, and how she had been informed by one who

knew that the pretty girl was “calm as an ox,” Mrs. Pechey Phipson

grimly intervened,—“I assure you I was anything but calm when you

swept that cat on to the floor!”

S. J.-B. laughed. And her laugh was a thing to hear,—especially when

the old jokes and the old stories were recalled,—a hearty musical

laugh that brought such wholesome tears to her eyes, and that would

not allow her face to set into really tragic lines.

But there is something more to be said about her dislike to cats.

After lunch at Bruntsfield Lodge, it was her custom to gather up the

bits of bread that were left and take them out to the lawn to feed

the birds. She loved to see the creatures flying towards her the

moment she appeared, and no cat was ever tolerated in the grounds.

One evening in early summer, when she came in from her work to a

high-walled garden all shimmering with promise, a half-grown kitten

stood in the way. “Shoo!” said S. J.-B. “Go away! Who allowed that

cat to be here?”

Everyone trembled,—except the little intruder. It looked S. J.-B.

full in the face, and held its ground.

Of course it was turned out, but a few days later she saw it in the

same place, leaping at a moth in the sunshine. And that time nothing

was said.

And a few days later still, when she had passed beyond the garden

into the house, the kitten walked forward to meet her. This really

was too much; but when she protested, the kitten simply looked in

her face and smiled.

So it was allowed to remain under due restrictions, until one night

S. J.-B. was awakened by a loud sneeze. She struck a light, and

there, on the shoulder of the sofa at the foot of her bed, calmly

reposing on a big woollen shawl, with its eyes fixed on her in

gentle protest against the open window, was the kitten.

It was simply uncanny. Of course it was only a kitten, but to S. J.-

B. it was always more. “It must have known me in a previous

incarnation,” she said. So she called it Karma, and before many days

were over it was a favoured and lovable member of the household,

taking all sorts of liberties in the most attractive way, and even

lying unforbidden on her lap. “Li’l cat!” she used to say

affectionately.

There is one more animal friend worth recalling, though pedigree and

admirers he had none,—the Nameless Dog at Bordighera.

S. J.-B. had gone to Bordighera in the winter of 1897-98 with a

friend who had been ill, and greatly did she enjoy the almost

unfailing sunshine. She seldom made acquaintances under such

conditions, but two delightful Irish ladies proved irresistible, and

a pleasant _partie carrée_ was the result. Every day S. J.-B. used

to walk with one or other of her friends through the unlovely main

street and sit for hours on the rocks at the Cap, watching the waves

tumbling about on that fine bit of coast.

One day, in passing through the somewhat squalid town, she was

stopped by a brawl among a few dogs,—a poor half-starved pariah was

being set upon and robbed of some morsel it had contrived to pick

up. Never was a more unwholesome-looking object than that dog,—with

a coat utterly out of condition,—wounds in every stage of refusal to

heal,—and an eye so mauled and battered that only a sanguine

prognosis could have associated it with the idea of any special

function in the future. The poor wretch showed no fight, but slunk

away as soon as its tormentors would let it go,—a pitiful craven,

utterly beaten in the struggle for life.

Next day it was seen again, slinking about in some bye-way, afraid

of everyone who came near. Of course S. J.-B. had a crust in her

pocket, and of course the dog got that crust, in spite of rivals and

in spite of its own groundless fears. Next day it was looking out,

and from that day the crust never failed. Little by little the

natural vitality of the creature began to gain ground; he became

something like a dog, and able to hold his own. His wounds healed,

and he soon could forage a bit for himself; but he never forgot to

look out for S. J.-B., and he never refused her crust. He began to

walk with her to the Cap, and to lie at a respectful distance till

she was ready to go home.

One day when she was confined to the house, he appeared on the steps

of the hotel. The waiter of course gave him a greeting that in

former times would have driven him well on the road to San Remo; but

now he held his ground. “What on earth does he want?” said the man.

“Oh,” said one of the others, “it’s Miss Blake’s dog.” At that

moment S. J.-B. came downstairs to _déjeuner_. She fetched him half

her roll from the dining-room, and the waiters might grumble as they

pleased.

From that time the dog formally constituted himself her body-guard,

and quite a creditable body-guard he was, with two good keen eyes

always on the look-out, and a coat worth wearing. He had positively

acquired a “presence.” He waited for her every day at the hotel

gate, and he walked proudly in front of her to the Cap. No other dog

dared to come near. No beggar ventured to molest. The very purveyors

of inlaid jewellery had to keep their distance.

At last—just before she left the Riviera—the Nameless Dog secured a

large bit of strongly smelling fish. There would have been a free

fight for it in the early days, but no other dog disputed his

possession of it now. He can’t have been overfed, poor fellow, even

then; but he brought his coveted trophy to S. J.-B. in triumph, and

laid it at her feet.

I am afraid he missed her horribly, and of course she could not

explain to him and say Goodbye,—as no doubt she did to Blackbird.

But she left behind a creature able to stand on his own legs, and

show a brave face to the world: I am not sure that she didn’t leave

behind the germ of a soul.

And, while this little story is scrupulously true, it tells in a

humble parable many episodes in the life of S. J.-B. that were known

to very few.

CHAPTER VII

THE SABBATICAL YEAR

It was that winter at Bordighera that gave her strength and energy

for the final uprooting. The autumn of 1898-99 was spent on a

driving tour of 1100 miles through the S.E. counties of England in

search of a suitable house. She set about the search in her usual

business-like way,—pasting into a book all the likely houses from

the agents’ lists, rejecting at a sweep all within ten miles of

London, all above or below a certain price and acreage, all that

fell short of the desired level above the sea, all that were in a

town, or that advertised their proximity to a railway station. The

tour was then planned to include as many as possible of those that

remained.

There were a few unusual disqualifications. One house that attracted

her belonged to the Rector of the parish, who refused to let to a

Roman Catholic or a dissenter, and, although S. J.-B. was neither,

she did not wish to be subjected to any test. Another house—more

strangely still—was only to be let to someone who would carry on the

evangelistic meetings in an out-building. “What if I were to take

the house and preach Buddhism?” she said.

Finally she decided on the house which she afterwards named

Windydene, near the village of Mark Cross, on the Forest Ridge of

Sussex, some five or six miles south of Tunbridge Wells. “It is

neither a new or an old house,” she wrote to her friend, Miss

Keily,—“built probably some 50 years ago,—very comfortable and airy,

and with pleasant garden and shrubberies, a good kitchen garden

(much neglected of late) and about 8 acres for pasture and hay.”

Having put various negotiations and alterations in train, she

returned to Edinburgh for the final winding-up.

And there was much in those last months that lingered pleasantly in

her memory. In June 1898 the British Medical Association had met in

Edinburgh, and S. J.-B., like most other doctors, had kept open

house. Some thirty medical women were present at the meeting, and,

before it broke up, Dr. Jane Walker organized a dinner under the

presidency of the old Edinburgh pioneer. Mrs. Garrett Anderson and

Mrs. Scharlieb were among the guests. As always, S. J.-B. spoke very

happily, and a number of those present got for the first time

something like a just impression of her personality.

Early in 1899 a Farewell Reception was given in her honour by the

Committee of her Hospital, and some happy inspiration made the

occasion not only a social success, but a gathering of unique

interest. The majority of the large company were in evening dress,

but the Dispensary patients were encouraged to look upon the

Reception as their affair too, and they came in what dress they had.

Moreover, it was no mere “meeting,” it was a real “party,” with

refreshments galore in a side room, and no compulsion to listen to

more speeches than one was in a mood for. The Marchioness of Bute,

President of the Hospital, who was ill, was represented by one of

the Vice-Presidents, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson. Lady Victoria

Campbell made a point of being present, as did the Countess of

Moray, and many patients, colleagues and allies of all sorts.

It was Professor Masson who moved the resolution of the evening:

“That this company, remembering all that has been done by Dr. Jex-

Blake so preëminently for the medical education of women, and for

the opening up of the medical profession to women, both here and

elsewhere, take this opportunity of congratulating her on the

present evidence of the success everywhere of the cause which owes

so much to her powerful initiation and persevering advocacy; and

regrets that the occasion should also be one of farewell.”

Dr. Balfour felt inclined, he said, to quote the words of the old

song:

“Dost thou remember, comrade old and hoary,

The days we fought and conquered side by side

On fields of battle, famous now in story?”

He indicated apologetically that the words were not wholly

appropriate, but S. J.-B. speedily set his mind at rest on that

score. She felt old and hoary enough.

Dr. Peel Ritchie recalled how he had begun to help the women

students simply from love of fair play, with no enthusiasm at all

for the cause, but how he had been gradually worked up to a warmer

feeling and interest; and Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Sibbald

confessed that he had taken no part in the old conflict at all; but

acknowledged gladly that his original dislike to the whole thing had

gradually given way as he had watched the life of the protagonist,

with increasing admiration, appreciation and....”

At that fine silence he left it.

A bouquet of roses was presented by Dr. Jessie Macgregor, one of the

most brilliant of S. J.-B.’s students; and a basket of flowers by

Winifred Beilby, daughter of a lady who had been a member of

Committee for many years, and a patient from the first.

Yes, it was a great send-off, and S. J.-B. was simple-hearted enough

to enjoy it all like a child.

There were other tokens of recognition too,—among them a

presentation from a great number of women doctors, and another from

the Dispensary patients.

* * * * *

There is no doubt that Dr. Sibbald voiced the opinion of many in his

tribute to S. J.-B. For years she had lived among the Edinburgh

people, driving about in her quiet brougham or unpretentious pony-

chaise, and retiring to the high-walled garden. In a way they could

not but get to know her. They might like or dislike her, but she

went on her way, doing her work absolutely without ostentation,

welcoming publicity when it seemed likely to forward her aims or the

welfare of the community, shunning it absolutely as a matter of

private taste.

With most of these whose opinion was worth having, opposition and

dislike were simply worn down. She was impulsive, she made mistakes

and would do so to the end of her life: her naturally hasty temper

and imperious disposition had been chastened indeed, but the

chastening fire had been far too fierce to produce perfection. She

held out at times about trifles,—failed to see that they _were_

trifles—and at times she terrified people more than she knew. Above

all she cared nothing for the praise and blame of any but those whom

she respected or loved. Of her indeed it might be said that she

heard the beat of a different drummer. But there was another side to

the picture after all. Many of those who regretted and criticised

details were yet forced to bow before the big transparent honesty,

the fine unflinching consistency, of her life.

“Yes, it was simply greatness.

There was nothing else I could say,

I had hedged my path more straitly,

But [hers] was the kinglier way.”

* * * * *

It remains only to give some picture of S. J.-B.’s life in

retirement. Dr. Clouston had shaken his head when he heard what she

proposed to do. It was a great risk to give up a life packed with

work and interest for one of leisure.

“I am not going to be idle,” she had said. “I am going to farm.”

“Then you’ll lose a lot of money.”

“I can’t lose much on ten acres.”

“_Ah!_” He seemed to indicate that ten acres was not enough; but as

a matter of fact S. J.-B. reaped now all the advantage of that love

of detail which had so often proved a snare. “Windydene” had been

unoccupied and more or less neglected for some time, so there was

abundant scope for an enterprising “Squire.” And the situation was

as choice as even the county of Sussex can provide. From the terrace

one looked right across to the South Downs, and even Fairlight was

supposed to be visible on a clear day. The garden had been ideally

planned on ground that fell away rather steeply to the south. It had

spacious lawns cunningly planted, some of the trees being of real

value and beauty.

Beyond the lawns were shady paths and all sort of unexpected

openings and surprises; and beyond these again were the meadows

hedged with blackberries, and carpeted in spring with cowslip and

ladies’ smock. From the meadows one passed through to the woods, and

so to the whole billowy stretch of the Weald, with its varied

foliage, its blue lights and chasing shadows, its lakes of white

mist in the still summer mornings.

S. J.-B. had seen the place first in November. She actually took

possession in May, when the red chestnuts were in bloom and the

woods full of bluebells.

“‘The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places’,” she said, “‘I

have a goodly heritage’;” and the words were constantly on her lips

till the end. Kipling’s “Sussex by the Sea” might have been written

for her, so gratefully did she take possession of it.

“Each to his choice, and I rejoice

The lot has fallen to me

In a fair ground—in a fair ground—

Yea, Sussex by the sea!”

Her first care was to institute a fruit garden, building a south

wall and planting vines, figs, peaches, nectarines and apricots. In

the course of a few years her strawberries in particular had

acquired quite a reputation.

She started a dairy too, and supervised it herself. It was a real

joy to her to have cows in the paddock and to produce her own cream

and butter. The hay-making and the harvest supper were great events

in the year.

But long before she had got as far as this—before the house was more

than tolerably straight after the great flitting—she was inviting

guests to share the joys of the spring and summer. All through the

later years of her life she had the intimate daily companionship she

prized so generously, but her doors stood open always as of old.

“Windydene is a Mecca,” one of the younger medical women said, and

there were those to whom it was a Mecca and something more. From S.

J.-B.’s old fellow-students down to some unknown girl graduate, they

came from all parts of the world. We have seen what Dr. Lillie

Saville thought of life at Windydene, and indeed Lady Jenkinson’s

“soul and body, especially soul” often finds an echo. A woman doctor

who met S. J.-B. first at that British Medical Association dinner in

Edinburgh writes years later:

“Thinking it over, I see that the best new influence that came

into my life during the last seven years was the Doctor’s young

fresh interest, her enthusiasm, her breadth of mind, her spiritual

force and faith, and her strong original wisdom.”

But it was not only women doctors who came. Literary folk were

guests too, and, above all, the old friends, whatever they had

chanced to become. Miss Du Pre, Lady Jenkinson, Miss Catharine

Eliott-Lockhart, Miss E. Cordery, Mrs. Gardiner, Mr. James Cordery,

Mr. Phipson and Dr. Pechey Phipson, Mrs. (Dr.) Mears, and many

others. The arrival of Dr. Agnes M‘Laren from her season’s practice

on the Riviera was one of the events of the early summer; she always

came by Newhaven and so to Crowborough, where S. J.-B. faithfully

awaited her. A still earlier event in the year was the arrival of

Miss Caroline Jex-Blake, “when the primroses were out,” and her joy

in the meadows and woods was a thing that only those who knew her

could conceive.

Little enough entertainment in the ordinary sense was offered to the

guests at any time. Breakfast in bed was an unfailing institution

for tired workers, and most of the guests were tired workers. There

was fruit and cream to heart’s content and beyond it; there were

long leisurely drives uphill and down dale through that beautiful

country,[158]—plenty of chess for those who were worthy of chess,—

unforgettable evenings round the study fire; and at all other times—

stated meals apart—an almost unlimited choice of books,—and liberty

to do as one pleased.

Footnote 158:

“I took her to see the pixies,” writes S. J.-B. to a friend, in

June, “I don’t think she did see any, but she greatly enjoyed the

woods, etc.”

* * * * *

S. J.-B. used to say that her one extravagance at Windydene was

journals and books. She had always been a book buyer, and books were

more essential than ever now. New shelves had to be put up every

year or so. Her collection of recent novels alone induced a well-

known publisher to say that she ought to have a testimonial from

authors and publishers. There was a certain amount of practical

benevolence in this. In Edinburgh she had often said that an

important part of her treatment of patients was the lending of

suitable novels, and at Windydene she often had twenty or thirty

books out at a time. Her taste was catholic in the extreme, but she

specially appreciated among others _Peter Ibbetson_, _San Celestino_

and _Out of Due Time_; and—like so many distinguished people—she

keenly enjoyed detective stories, especially for reading in the

watches of the night.

She had lost none of her love of poetry. The “poetry book-case” had

an honoured place as of old; but, as she sat in her big chair by the

fire, she had a revolving stand filled with special favourites

within reach of her right hand, and, on her left (in the angle of

the chimney-piece) a tiny set of shelves brought from the

corresponding nook in her Edinburgh consulting room, contained her

Mother’s Bible and a few other chosen friends.

But the range of her purchases during those later years was very

wide: almost at random one recalls Blomefield’s _Norfolk_, all

Father Tyrrell’s works, a whole library of books on social

problems,—industry, poverty, labour, etc.—and a fine copy of _The

Book of the Dead_.

She retained her old interest in what one may call the polemics of

religion, and this was intensified by a delightful and unexpected

friendship of those later days.

She had not been many weeks in Mark Cross before some mutual friend

suggested that she might care to know the Roman Catholic priest—a

man, as it chanced, of scholarship and culture—following up the

suggestion with the loan of a book which the priest had published

some years before.[159] A few days later S. J.-B. wrote the

following letter:

“June 15th [1899].

DEAR SIR,

I have been reading your book on Reunion with very great

sympathy and admiration; and, if you care to call on an elderly

woman who is not of your creed, I should be very glad to have the

honour of making your acquaintance.

I expect to be at home tomorrow afternoon, or could fix any day

except Monday, next week, if more convenient to you.

Yours truly,

SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE, M.D.

Rev. Father Duggan.”

Footnote 159:

_Steps towards Reunion._ The book had been put on the Index

Expurgatorius.

It did not strike the looker-on as a specially likely combination,

but it was the unlikely thing that happened. The Revd. Father Duggan

became one of the most welcome guests at Windydene. He and his dog,

Caesar, used to drop in almost every Sunday afternoon for

strawberries on the lawn or tea round the study fire. I don’t

pretend that Caesar took any interest in the strawberries—possible

rabbits were a more absorbing subject—but he did enjoy his bowl of

tea, especially when a lump of sugar remained at the bottom as a

_bonne bouche_. He was the centre of interest when his turn came,

and, when the anticipated “crunch” was heard, the general laugh of

sympathy never failed. They were just happy children together,—the

Dog, the Reverend Father and the old Pioneer, and now the world is

the poorer for the loss of all three.

There were great talks on those Sunday afternoons; it was no

uncommon thing to see three versions of the Bible and half a dozen

volumes of the _Encyclopaedia_ lying about at the end to witness to

the interest of the discussion. There was much borrowing and lending

of books,—and no obvious change of view on the part of anyone except

in the direction of increased tolerance and brotherly kindness. A

very simple anecdote will give as good an idea as any of the nature

of the friendship.

Father Duggan had been the lender of Canon Cheyne’s _Commentary on

the Psalms_, which he had just reviewed for a daily paper.

“I won’t pretend that I read the whole of it,” said S. J.-B. in

returning the volumes. “In fact”—with a sparkle of mischief,—“I

noticed when it came that only about a quarter of the leaves were

cut.”

“Yes,” he admitted tranquilly. “I did think of cutting a few more

before sending it up to you,—but I didn’t.”

“_Ah, no!_” she said. “You were an honest man.”

She was on excellent terms, too, with the local doctors: they looked

forward to a chat when they met her in the country lanes, and, if,

when she left Edinburgh, there had been any hatchet left to bury,

their boyish camaraderie would soon have compelled her to bury it.

“I confess I had a prejudice against women doctors,” one of them

said after her death, “but she disarmed me completely.”

The life at Windydene was not unbroken. The clay soil in that wooded

garden was not conducive to the health of a rheumatic person like S.

J.-B., so several brief winters were spent at various places on the

Riviera, and one in Portugal, mainly in the Sacred Forest at

Bussaco. At Carqueiranne in Provence one of the editors of the

_Matin_ was a fellow guest, and he proved another unexpected

comrade. It must have been a matter of some surprise to him to meet

in that unlikely place, an elderly English gentlewoman with a grasp

of the range of European politics and a facility for discussing it

in excellent French.

It was at Carqueiranne that she and the intimate friend of those

days met Mr. Frederic Myers and Professor William James, and here

too there was a pleasant _partie carrée_ for some days with

Professor and Mrs. Gardiner who were on a cycling tour in the south

of France. Professor Gardiner had several times been S. J.-B.’s

guest in Edinburgh, when his researches brought him north to inspect

some unique document among the archives there, and it was a pleasant

change to meet when both were in purely holiday mood.

In the late Autumn of 1909—in spite of increasing physical

disqualifications—she made a last driving tour to her beloved

Yarrow.

* * * * *

It is needless to say that she never lost her interest in the

happenings of the world. She had latterly a profound distrust of

Germany, and was an eager reader of the articles on this subject in

the _National Review_. _The Riddle of the Sands_ was a novel that

she helped to circulate widely. Her name appeared pretty frequently

in the correspondence columns of the _Times_, sometimes in

connection with Woman Suffrage, more often in unavailing protest

against the endless “joy-riding”—degenerating into the sheer

lawlessness of the “road-hog”—that was making the loveliest English

lanes a nightmare of dust and danger.

It was to the _Times_, too, that she sent her last tribute to the

most heroic of her Edinburgh friends in the old days of the “fight.”

“SIR,—It seems impossible to let the grave close over the mortal

remains of Professor Masson without one word of heartfelt

gratitude from those whom he befriended so nobly in 1869 and the

following years. Our struggle with the University was hard enough

as it was, but without his help and that of half a dozen other men

it would have been impracticable. I feel that it is really quite

impossible to do justice to the chivalry, the unselfishness, the

constant readiness to espouse the unpopular cause, and to fight in

its foremost ranks, which characterized Professor Masson, and it

would take far too much of your space to say even a fraction of

what could be said of the aid he gave us in that great battle.

But I beg you at least to allow me to say that those so deeply

indebted to him will never forget him, but hold his memory in love

and reverence as long as they live.

Yours obediently,

SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE.

Windydene, Mark Cross, Sussex, Oct. 10 [1907].”

The suffrage movement was always near her heart, though she never

grew restless or impatient over the long delay. She never approved

of tax-resistance, and militant methods made her uneasy, though she

admitted that they had given the cause a prominence that nothing

else could have done. Looking back in 1879 on her own fight she had

been able to say, “We seemed led all the way; certainly our aim was

straight at the end [before us], but ‘highly and holily’ too. I

never minded dirt of others’ throwing, but I don’t think I ever

smirched my own conscience.” It was in her favour that the Editor of

the _Spectator_ broke through his stern rule of excluding all

letters advocating the extension of the franchise to women. “Our

respect for so eminent a lady makes it a pleasure to publish Dr.

Sophia Jex-Blake’s letter.”

It was this question of the suffrage, too, as we shall see, that

brought her for the last time into touch with Octavia Hill.

S. J.-B.’s outer circle had never suspected her of being

“religious,” and even by the fireside she spoke less perhaps, rather

than more, on the subject as time went on; but the old quotations

kept flashing up to witness to the fire beneath. She was always

profoundly interested in any genuine profession of faith, any real

conversion or perversion. Several of her friends joined the Church

of Rome in those later years, and she was one to whom they always

felt the need of justifying themselves. They felt sure of an

underlying sympathy, however she might disapprove. Often, of course,

she declined to take the matter too seriously. To an old student she

wrote:

“I am not at all shocked at your Sunday programme, but I must say

I am amused at your going to a dissenting chapel.”

And again:

“I don’t trouble myself much about who goes ‘over to Rome’ and who

does not. After all for each one,—‘To his own Master he stands or

falls,’ and what we must ask of each is to act to the best of his

lights.

But I think ‘subterfuging’ implies dim lights.”

Her own attitude grew steadily simpler, enriching the vital elements

of her Mother’s creed with the wisdom and experience of her own

life. As time went on she disliked increasingly to be classed with

those whose attitude towards religion is one of indifference. Even

before she left Edinburgh she had written to an old school friend,

in acknowledgement of a book by another schoolfellow:

“To speak plainly then it strikes me as crude and superficial,—as

the work of a person who has caught up passwords rather than of

one who has struggled through the conflict of thought personally.

It reminds me forcibly of the old proverb, ‘Qui pauca considerat

facile pronuntiat.’ The deeper we go into problems, whether social

or religious, the less possible it seems to me to pronounce about

them offhand.

In theology you would, I suppose, rank me among the Agnostics, as

I feel very strongly how little we _know_ on such subjects, and

that the truly scientific aspect of mind is one of suspension of

judgment; but I have no sympathy at all with C.’s attacks on

Christianity and the alleged motives of its advocates, and still

less with her estimate of the character of Christ.

The programme of Socialism strikes me (so far as I understand it)

as unworkable, because it ignores a great many of the facts of

human nature; and I am sure you are right in thinking that the

true path of progress lies in gradual improvement, and gradual

removal of unjust restrictions, rather than in sudden violence and

revolution.”

To a much more intimate friend she had written about the same time:

“Yes, I think —— is what I should call an Agnostic, but perhaps

you from lordly heights of orthodoxy don’t appreciate that that

differs ‘toto caelo’ from an atheist; and that it is one of the

most offensive of errors,—and one frequently made from culpable

carelessness,—to substitute the one for the other.”

Her appreciation of the Bible increased—and it had always been an

exceptional appreciation;—but there are two quotations that stand

out in one’s memory as belonging to her in a special sense. She

always appropriated to herself with great fervour the prayer of

Agur:—“Two things have I required of thee...: Remove far from me

vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with

food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who

is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my

God in vain.”

And more than once, after quoting the words from Isaiah:—“Thus saith

the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy;

I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a

contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and

to revive the heart of the contrite ones,” she added almost under

her breath,

“I am not sure that that is not the finest thing in the whole

Bible.”

But while she was one of those to whom the Old Testament makes

perhaps a special appeal, it was not by accident that at the time of

her death, and for years previously, the words were fixed above the

mantelpiece, both in her study and in her bedroom,—“Bear ye one

another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

* * * * *

Some years before leaving Edinburgh, S. J.-B. had a heart attack

which caused Dr. Balfour grave uneasiness, and, although she rallied

in the course of a week, similar attacks kept recurring at

considerable intervals. On one occasion at Windydene she was

unconscious for several hours, and finally “came out of blackness”

to ask with great calmness, “Well, what do you suppose has

happened?”

Within a week of this attack she started for the Riviera.

It is probable that she never fully realized the seriousness of

these cardiac signs and symptoms; but, in one way or another, death

knocked at her door pretty frequently during those later years.

In 1901-2, she suffered from a mysterious and anomalous “growth,”

for which a leading London surgeon refused to operate on the ground

that she was a bad subject. She was not sorry for the refusal, but

the enemy grew with appalling rapidity, and it became increasingly

clear that something would have to be done. All through the period

of uncertainty she went on with her life absolutely as usual. “I did

wake up one night in a horror of great darkness,” she confessed,

“wondering what was going to happen; but very soon Whittier’s words

came into my mind:

“I know not what the future hath

Of marvel or surprise,

Assured alone that life and death

His mercy underlies....

I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air;

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care.”

And then I just turned over on the other side and went to sleep

again.”

“How thankful we should be,” she said on another occasion, “that we

don’t know what is before us. Life is hard enough, it would be much

harder if we knew.”

When a friend remarked on her courage, she said,—and this was a

remark repeated many times before the end of her life,—“No, no. I

have been brave sometimes in my life, but not now. There is nothing

to be brave about now.”

In response one day to a warmer expression of admiration, she almost

cried out in protest,—“_Oh!_ ... God be merciful to me a sinner.

That is what one feels more and more.” Then, after a pause:

“‘Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckoned,

And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace—

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned

Unto my fitting place.’”

Another day she said, “My life here will not be much longer, but I

feel that I have not reached the end. I have learnt a great deal,

and I have a great deal still to learn. Unless one has absolutely

_refused_ to learn, one must get the chance to learn more.”

Her friend quoted Thring. “My creed is life. Blessed is life the

King, etc.”

“Ah,” she said, “I don’t know that it will be _better_ than this

life, but it will give us the chance to learn fresh things.”

It was on that occasion that she looked death in the face while

still in full possession of her powers—“‘I laid me down with a

will,’” she said—; but for the moment the sacrifice was not required

of her. When the malady reached a point at which surgical

interference was at worst a necessary palliative, she proposed to

ask two of her own old students to come and undertake an operation.

It was represented to her that it was scarcely fair to put so great

a responsibility on them,[160] so she wrote to her friend, Mr.

Cathcart of Edinburgh, asking him to come and undertake the case. He

came at once, of course, and the operation proved a triumphant

success.[161]

Footnote 160:

At that time very few women had come into the front rank as

surgeons.

Footnote 161:

Her old fellow student, Dr. Annie Clark, who had graduated with

her at Berne, came from Birmingham to give the anaesthetic.

So life was given back to her just as she had laid it down, and the

remaining years were in some respects the happiest and most peaceful

she had known. She renewed her youth, though in truth she had never

grown old, and lived more than ever in the life of her “girls.” She

had always said, “Not me, but us.” Now more and more the “us” came

into the centre of her scheme of life. Perhaps her last ambition was

that some British University should give her its honorary degree,

but her friends only realized this when she had already laid the

ambition down. “I shall never have a University hood,” she said once

or twice quite simply. All the more she enjoyed the glories of the

young women doctors who were coming on. She listened to their

accounts of what they had learned and of what they had done with an

admiration that was nothing short of poignant in its simplicity. Her

own share in the whole thing simply dropped out. At most she would

say when some gifted visitor was gone, “Wonderful the work she is

doing! Well, I did help a little bit once upon a time, didn’t I?”

It was when one of her old girls seemed face to face for the first

time with that most bitter disappointment in a doctor’s experience,—

the loss of a patient for whose life one has fought with repeated

recrudescence of hope in the teeth of despair,—that S. J.-B. wrote

one of her last letters:

“Windydene,

7 p.m. March 19th. 1911.

DEAR CHILD,

I _am_ so sorry for you, and I think of you so much! It is

an experience that has to come to all of us who live in our work,—

and we must believe ‘we shall see in heaven why it could not be

otherwise.’

Meanwhile ‘the Healer by Gennesaret shall walk thy rounds with

thee.’

When it is all over,—for I suppose that is now the end,—I think

you should come down here for a few perfectly quiet days. We shall

be so glad to have you.

Yours sincerely,

S. J.-B.”

There was, of course, one visitor whom she would fain have welcomed

to her “pleasant places.” She had followed Octavia Hill’s life with

unfailing interest, and had subscribed to the Derwentwater scheme,

and to other of Miss Hill’s beneficent works. In July or August 1910

a letter opposing the extension of the suffrage to women appeared in

the _Times_ above the signature of Octavia Hill. S. J.-B. replied to

the letter, regretting that Miss Hill should have “given the support

of her honoured name” to the negative side of the controversy. The

_Times_ did not often refuse a communication from S. J.-B., but on

this occasion her letter was not inserted. Perhaps the trifling

episode called up memories too insistent to be stilled, for a day or

two later she wrote to her old friend:

“August 5th. 1910.

Windydene, Mark Cross, Sussex.

DEAR,

I wrote enclosed mainly as an answer to yours in the

_Times_, and as it has been sent back to me, crowded out, I send

it to you,—to show you another old woman’s point of view.

I am rheumatic and lame now, and cannot go about much, but I wish

you would come down and spend two or three days with me here on

the Sussex hills, and we would thrash out this Suffrage question—

surely one of us ought to be able to convince the other!

And I _should_ like to see you again!

Yours sincerely,

S. JEX-BLAKE.

I grieved greatly with you in your loss in June.”[162]

Footnote 162:

Miss Miranda Hill died in June 1910.

Miss Octavia Hill had allowed herself no “sabbatical year,” and she

was flagging in harness. Her life had been spent in unremitting

service of her fellow men. She answered her old friend’s letter, but

she could not respond. One has no difficulty in understanding her

attitude now. A conventional meeting would have been useless, and

anything else would have involved a greater upheaval than most

people are willing to face as life goes on.

And it well may be that she had acted wisely all along. As Mrs. Jex-

Blake had said many years before with that strange _pre_vision that

is given sometimes to the pure in heart,—“God has two great works,—

one for her, one for you.”

Those two great works could never have been combined.

And, indeed, no one with a disposition like S. J.-B.’s can go

through life without losing friends. She might have said with St.

Teresa,—“For one thing, the devil sometimes fills me with such a

harsh and cruel temper; such a spirit of anger and hostility at some

people, that I could eat them up and annihilate them.” But, as in

the case of St. Teresa, the obverse side of the medal was a capacity

for loving that can seldom have been surpassed in our human nature.

“Went not my heart with thee...?” she used to say: and it did,—not

only with those nearest to her, but with all who appealed to her

mother-heart. The comforting letter was written, in spite of all

fatigue and inconvenience, at the earliest possible moment: the box

of flowers, the grapes, the wine, the cheque, the open hospitable

doors,—all seemed messengers waiting for their turn, like the swift-

heeled servants of the Fairy Queen.

No appeal ever came to her that she ignored. The Charity

Organisation Society was familiar with her name; and great sometimes

was her disappointment when those she wanted to help were pronounced

hopeless or unworthy. Nothing that she loved ever grew old. Her

friends, her horses,—even the purely material things to which she

was attached—grew more beautiful in her eyes as their market value

decreased. She always parted deliberately with the flowers that had

stood by her hand. No one was ever allowed to throw them away as a

matter of routine, and often she would raise them to her lips before

putting them in the fire.

St. Teresa’s love no doubt was a more transcendent thing. It was her

lot to live in an age of faith. S. J.-B. often quoted Whittier’s

_Autograph_:

“If of the Law’s stone table,

To hold he scarce was able

The first great precept fast,

He kept for man the last.

Through mortal lapse and dulness

What lacks the Eternal Fulness,

If still our weakness can

Love Him in loving man?”

There are those of whom Teresa herself said:

“They may have more merit in His eyes than their more favoured

neighbours, because their obedience and their faith and their love

have cost them more. Their Lord deals with them as with strong and

valiant men, appointing them travail and trouble here, that they

may fight for Him the good fight of faith, and only come in for

the prize at the end.”

No portrait gives any adequate idea of Sophia Jex-Blake. Someone who

saw her first in 1886 writes:

“Although too stout in figure, she had a fine commanding presence,

and one was struck at once by the exceeding _comeliness_ of her

face. It was strong, wise and benevolent, capable of an

extraordinary range of expression. The brow was ideally shaped,

broad and serene in repose, though always liable to the summer

lightnings that one half admired, half dreaded. Her hair was

growing white, but the eyebrows remained black till the end, and

the eyes, both by nature and by the long discipline of life, were

extraordinarily fine and expressive.”

It was twenty years later than this that a girl friend said,—“She

has the look of one ‘following fearlessly’.” Throughout life, the

tendency to sadness of expression was wholly contradicted by her

smile; her eyes very readily bubbled over with merriment; as some

reporter had said in the days of the fight, “With those dimples she

must be good-natured.” When an old servant was shown the final

portrait in this volume, she said, “But I want her to look up at me

and laugh as she used to do!”

* * * * *

One does not wish to dwell on the history of the last few months.

From the physical point of view it is a familiar story. One by one

every medicament lost its efficacy: the failing heart ceased to

invigorate one organ after another. But the strong and disciplined

will held the shattered tabernacle together. Sometimes acute

symptoms forced her to stay in bed for a day or two, but she always

struggled on to her feet again at the earliest possible moment and

went for the daily drive through her beloved lanes and woods. True

that towards the end she noticed these less and less,—drowsed most

of the way; but, if there was occasion to rouse herself and speak to

anyone, she did so almost as of old.

“The worst of lying awake at night,” she used to say whimsically,

“is that one realizes all the mistakes one has made in one’s life.”

It was not even _lying_ awake sometimes: it was a weary sitting up

or lying down as each position in turn became intolerable. And

often, after only three minutes’ unconsciousness, she would exclaim

in something like the old happy voice, “I have had such a lovely

sleep!”

Almost to the last day she repeated bits of her favourite poems and

psalms,—and nothing gave her so much pleasure as to plan holidays

for those who still had a day’s work before them. She was infinitely

mindful of those who tended her. Almost her last words were,—“Now do

go and have a good rest.”

And so the end came,—suddenly but not unexpectedly. She sat down one

day more tired than usual—it was the 7th January, 1912—stretched

herself back, and rendered up her soul to God who gave it.

* * * * *

A great wave of feeling arose in the village and round about when it

was known that the familiar figure of the old warrior would no more

be seen in her Sussex lanes. Perplexed at first, her neighbours of

all classes had come in a measure to understand her, to be proud of

her,—some of them to love her. With one or two, indeed, she had

formed a warm and intimate friendship. There was every token of

respectful sympathy and mourning when the little procession made its

way to Rotherfield Church.[163]

Footnote 163:

By a strange coincidence she lies within a few yards of her old

friend and champion, Sir James Stansfeld. See Appendix G.

And that wave of feeling went out over the whole world. Messages and

tributes of appreciation and regret poured steadily in. The most

beautiful and adequate was the paragraph in the _Pall Mall Gazette_:

“The woman as Happy Warrior has passed away with the death in her

Sussex home of Sophia Jex-Blake. There is scarcely an attribute of

the great figure in Wordsworth’s poem which she did not possess,

with the crowning added happiness of seeing her fame as a noble

and successful pioneer in a great movement finally established.

She it was, more than anyone else, who compelled the gates of the

medical profession to be opened to women. Through years of

hostility and obloquy she never lost heart in her Cause; and,

meeting violence with reason and coarseness with dignity, she won

at last. Her longest and bitterest fight was with the University

of Edinburgh; and, later, when Parliament had recognized the right

of women to be doctors, it was in that city that she practised for

twenty-one years. Since the death of Florence Nightingale no woman

has died of whom more truly may it be written, _Bene actæ vitæ

recordatio jucundissima est_.

But the reader may find a special propriety in a very simple

resolution passed a few days later in an Over Seas dominion:

“That the members of the University Women’s Club of Toronto do

place on record their deep sense of the great influence and noble

life of Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake. Now that her distinguished career

has closed, they feel that she was the helper of all University

women,—and they love her for many reasons.”

THE END

APPENDIX A

PEDIGREE OF THE JEX-BLAKE FAMILY

S. J.-B.’s father was one of the Blakes of Bunwell, Scottow, etc.,

in the county of Norfolk.

A family of Blakes settled at Bunwell in 1620. It is said

traditionally that they came from Somersetshire and were descended

from the same family as Robert Blake, the great Admiral of the

Commonwealth, being probably a branch of the original family of the

Blaks, Blaaks or Blakes of Pinnels in the parish of Cawne or Calne,

Co. Wilts., there seated as early, at least, as 1400. These families

bore the same arms with slight differences, namely, argent a chevron

between three garbs sable. Crest, on a chapeau gules turned up

ermine, a martlet argent.

In the chancel of Bunwell Church, near the altar rails, is a

tombstone with the following inscription:

Under this Stone lyeth the Body of Mr John Blake

He dyed the 21 of August 1686 being sixtie 4

Yeares of age and upwards.

Above this legend are the arms of Blake as above: on the chevron a

fleur-de-lis for difference.

From this gentleman is descended in direct line all the present

family through his fourth son, Robert Blake, who settled at Scottow

about 1680, marrying Margaret, eldest daughter of William Durrant of

Scottow Hall. Their son, Thomas Blake of Scottow, born November 7th,

1689, married Elizabeth, daughter of John Jex, Esq. of Lowestoft,

and the grandson of these last, William Blake of Swanton Abbots, in

the Commission of the Peace, and Deputy Lieutenant for Norfolk,

having inherited the chief part of the Jex property, obtained on his

petition by Royal Licence on August 17th, 1837, that he and his

descendants should assume and use the surname Jex in addition to and

before that of Blake, and also bear the arms of Jex quarterly, in

the second quarter, with those of Blake.[164]

Footnote 164:

See _The London Gazette_, Friday, August 25, 1837.

APPENDIX B

“WORDS FOR THE WAY.”[165]—No. 2. REST

“There remaineth a Rest for the people of God.”—HEB. IV. 9.

Footnote 165:

The authors have sought to supply a want, more or less widely

felt, of simple Tracts, which, while endeavouring to set forth the

deepest truths of Christianity, shall avoid the phraseology of

certain schools, as jarring on the minds of many.

Those who see any degree of successful effort in the Tracts

already published are invited to assist in obtaining for them, and

others of the series, such a circulation as may best ensure their

usefulness.

What is the thing that you wish for most in the world?

I cannot hear your answers to my question, and I do not suppose that

everyone to whom it is addressed would answer it in the same way;

but I must try and fancy to myself what you would be most likely to

say. And first I suppose that each of you would be likely to wish

for that of which he has most felt the need.

Some of you, perhaps, who are very poor, would say, “Money.” Well,

money is a very good thing, and, if we know how to use it rightly, a

great blessing for which to thank God when He gives it to us; but

you might have money, and yet be far from happy—yet have a great

many of your deepest wants unsatisfied. And very many of those who

have most money would be the first to tell you that this is the

case; and I am sure that with very little of it, it is possible to

be very happy if we have some other things.

I hardly think that money is what we should wish for most.

Those of you who are very ill, and who are constantly suffering pain

that seems to be always coming freshly upon you, would perhaps say,

“Health.” Well, that too is a very good and great gift of God’s, and

those of us who have it should thank Him very much for it, and pity

heartily and helpfully those who have it not. But I think that with

even this blessing, there may be very great wants left; and I

believe that it is possible to be very blessed without it. I do not

think that Health satisfies the deepest want of our nature.

And some of you perhaps, who have felt how sad it is to be ignorant

of many things that it would be so good to know, and who are longing

to learn more about God and His great and wonderful works, might say

that “Knowledge” was the gift which of all others you desire.

Some again who have felt how sad it is to stand all alone in this

great world, every part of which God has made so dependent on the

rest,—who long for some heart to lean upon in all life’s troubles,

some hand to help to cut a way through them, will say that “Love” is

the greatest blessing that it seems to them possible to receive.

I have no doubt that if I were really talking to you, or, still

better, could see the thoughts of your hearts, I should be told of

many wants which you earnestly desire to have satisfied,—wants, some

of them belonging to the lower and some of them to the higher part

of that wonderful nature which God has given to us all.

And now perhaps you would like to hear _my_ answer to this question

I have been asking of you, “What is the thing we most want?” It

seems to me that there is one blessing which sums up in itself—which

seems to imply or to contain—almost all others, and which, if we go

deeply enough into it, does really satisfy all the great wants of

our nature. This is REST.

Now let us think what Rest is: and see whether if you had that, you

would have the deepest part of all your wants satisfied.

You said you wanted Money? Well, was not the comfort which you

thought money could give you, just that freedom from care and

anxiety which we call Rest?—was it not really for this, and not for

the money itself, you longed?

And you wanted Health? Is it not just because health would give you

rest from pain and from continual weariness that it seems to you the

best of all things? Does not Health for you really mean Rest?

And is it not because there is something that you are always longing

to know and understand that you desire so much to have Knowledge? Is

not your wish for it founded on the feeling that God gave you a mind

and understanding which can only be satisfied by learning and

knowing. Do you not really desire knowledge that your intellect may

have some firm standing ground?—that it too may have Rest?

And most of all do not you who long for Love, long for it because

you feel that to have some one beside you to feel for you and help

you, to pray with and work with you through all the labours of this

life, is the nearest approach to Rest that we can have on earth,

except that deepest Rest which comes through feeling the constant

nearness of Him who loves most of all, who “will never leave thee

nor forsake thee” (Heb. xiii. 5). If then we can but look forward to

Rest, are we not sure of having _all_ that we need?

And it is just this that is promised to us in the text we read at

the beginning, “There remaineth a Rest for the people of God.” God

knows so well all our wants, and knows so well what will best supply

them, that all through the Bible you will find beautiful promises

about Rest. Let us look at a few of them. Job in the midst of his

great troubles speaks of the future life as that “where the weary

are at Rest” (Job. iii. 17). The prophet Jeremiah promises to those

who will hear God’s will and seek to do it, that they “shall find

Rest for their souls” (Jer. vi. 16). Our Lord Jesus Christ knew well

about this deepest want in our nature when He spoke that most

beautiful of invitations to all who heard Him on earth, and to all

who read His words now, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are

heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and

learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find

Rest unto your souls” (Matt. xi. 28, 29).

And the whole argument of the chapter from which the text we are

talking about is taken, is this, “Let us therefore fear, lest, a

promise being left us of entering into His Rest, any of us should

seem to come short of it” (Heb. iv. 1).

But now let us ask what is implied or meant by those last words

about “coming short of it?” What is meant by our Lord’s telling

people that they must “take His yoke upon them” and be “meek and

lowly of heart” if they would find Rest? What is meant when Rest is

promised specially to the “people of God”?

Now, if we believe that God loves us as He does, quite infinitely—

more than we can even understand—we may be quite sure that He will

always give us every good thing that He can—that He will never put

any limit to His promises if He can help it—that He would like to

give Rest and all other good things to everyone if it were possible.

We must never doubt for one moment God’s willingness to give us all

good things, and to do all for us that it is possible for love to

do. Remember what Christ says about that, “If ye then, being evil,

know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall

your Father which is in heaven know how to give good things to them

that ask Him (Matt. vii. 11). And again, “I say not that I will pray

the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you” (John xvi.

26, 27). And St. Paul tells us that “He that spared not His own Son,

but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely

give us all things?” (Rom. viii. 32).

So you see that we may be quite sure that if we do not get this

great blessing, Rest, it will not be because God is not willing to

give it to us.

But there are certain great principles, which we call laws, which

govern God’s world, which are of the very nature of God’s own being,

and the more we come to know and realize about these laws, the more

we shall find them to be the most wonderfully good and beautiful and

blessed ones which could be imagined, and see in every one of them

some great and glorious provision for the best possible things,

which could not come without them.

Now you know God made man in His own image (Gen. i. 27), and, though

man afterwards broke that beautiful image and lost the perfect

likeness that God had given him to Himself—(as we are told in

Eccles. vii. 29, “God made man upright; but they have sought out

many inventions”)—still man is so deep a partaker of God’s nature,

that the truest and deepest part of him is that which is like God

and akin to Him, so that St. Paul tells us, “In God we live, and

move, and have our being ... for we are also his offspring” (Acts

xvii. 28). Now just because our whole blessedness, and our only hope

of returning at last to the perfect image in which God made us, lies

in our trying to get nearer and nearer to God, and to become more

and more like Him, so that our Lord Jesus bids us “Be perfect, even

as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. v. 48)—just

because of this, I say, one of the great and merciful laws of God is

that none of us shall ever find any true happiness apart from

goodness; and no one can hope for Rest who does not seek it in the

way of striving to do God’s will. Some one has said that the true

Rest of the soul is attained only when God’s will is our will. So we

are told by Isaiah, that “There is no peace, saith my God, for the

wicked” (Isa. lvii. 21).

And “the wicked” do not mean those only who do great and shameful

sins, which seem very terrible even to us, but all who do not strive

in everything to do God’s will. Let us look a little more closely at

what this will of God’s is.

We are told in the Old Testament what it is. Look at Isaiah i. 16,

17, “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of thy doing from

before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment,

relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.”

And again, look at Micah vi. 8, “He hath showed thee, O man, what is

good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and

to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

And when we come to the New Testament, we find Our Lord Jesus Christ

telling men who those are whom God blesses—what it is to do God’s

will:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the pure in heart.

Blessed are the peacemakers.” (See Matt. v.)

And while He says that that man only “shall enter into the kingdom

of heaven,” who “doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven”

(Matt. vii. 21), He explains that will to be, “Thou shalt love the

Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all

thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.... This do and thou

shalt live” (Luke x. 27, 28). So that if that Rest seems to us a

great and glorious thing to attain, we must seek it in God’s way; we

must try to do God’s will here, that we may rest in perfect harmony

and agreement with that will hereafter.

Is it not a wonderful and beautiful thing that God loves us _so_

much that He will not _let_ us be otherwise than good?—that He will

not cease to remind us by constant unhappiness and restlessness that

we are not fulfilling our highest end, till we strive day by day to

come nearer to Him; so that at last, in that great happy day of

Rest, there will be no more striving; for “we shall be like Him, for

we shall see Him as He is.”