CHAPTER XIII

A VISIT TO SOME AMERICAN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

“I have such a feeling that with the new world, a new life will open.”

So S. J.-B. had written in October 1864, and, seven months later, she sailed for Boston. This crossing of the Atlantic was another considerable venture for the young woman of those days; and, although S. J.-B. took with her a number of introductions, she knew no one on the other side. She was fortunate, however, in her travelling companion, Miss Isabel Bain (now Mrs. James Brander, H.M. Inspectress of Schools for Madras, retired), a young girl of exceptional charm and promise, in whose education S. J.-B. and her parents had taken a deep and active interest.

It is scarcely necessary to say that both Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake regarded the new enterprise with profound misgiving: a few days before the parting Mrs. Jex-Blake had written to Mrs. Ballantyne:

“I was so sadly selfish and engrossed about America the few hours you were here, that I must write a line to tell you how grateful I feel for all your kindness to Sophy, and how thankful I am that she has such a friend to consult with in this hour of need. I hope you did not suffer for the way in which you were plagued here: it really was very hard: though I quite believe you don’t think so.

Tuesday. Sophy’s letter has just come, and I do indeed need your prayers and sympathy. The wrench it is to me to have her go is indescribable, but I hope and believe my view will be more reasonable as time goes on. Any way, I know I shall have strength to bear. It is quite a panic, and I feel as if I must run away from it. Yet I would not prevent it if I could. I should have been very thankful for an older companion....

I ought not to plague you, her good kind friend.

May God bless you and _all_ dear to you.

Yours affectionately, M. E. J.-B.

I hope to write you a less selfish letter another time. I am hardly myself now. Is it not curious,—I have such a prejudice against Americans that I hardly ever will read a book describing American manners. I _hate_ descriptions of low life.”

Surely the frequent twinkle was returning to her eye when she wrote the closing words of the postscript? In any case there is no doubt about it a short time later when a question arose about Miss Bain’s leaving S. J.-B. and becoming a student in one of the colleges they had visited together:

“I think Daddy has a terror of only your bleached bones(!) being found, if you went about without a companion.”

The two girls left Liverpool on May 27th, and, after experiencing some rough weather which confined them to their berths, they staggered gallantly up on deck to enjoy the voyage and to make the acquaintance of their fellow-passengers. “A very nice Scotch Independent, Dr. Raleigh of Canonbury,” is specially noted.

The great excitement of the voyage is described in a letter to her Mother:

“After I had done writing to you, we were summoned by a cry of ‘Icebergs!’ and up we ran to see a bright white light on the horizon, just visible, right on our track. Soon another came in sight and it was really grand the next hour. The evening hardly beginning to close in, but the cold _intense_, yet so beautiful.... On went the ship, tearing on to the icebergs, that grew whiter and larger every minute,— great cliffs of white rearing themselves out of the waves that beat into spray at their base,—looking so strong and grim and beautiful.”

On June 8th the _Africa_ reached Boston about midnight, and next morning the two young women went on shore to begin the new life. The weather was very warm and most of the people to whom they had introductions were out of town. The travellers suffered a good deal from the heat and from various minor inconveniences due mainly to the strangeness and expensiveness of life in general; but S. J.-B. does not fail to put on record how much they enjoyed the ice-cream!

Dr. Lucy Sewall was at her post, but Mrs. Peter Taylor, in providing this introduction had given the wrong address, and it was a couple of days before they succeeded in finding her. The meeting was destined to be full of significance in determining S. J.-B.’s future career.

It was an interesting moment in which to visit the States. The war was over, but feeling still ran high, and, although the travellers met with much kindness and hospitality, they were not a little surprised to find themselves in an atmosphere of deep resentment against England.

“Oh, dear, How they turned on the tap, and talked right on end when they got near politics, only pausing to wonder at our ‘ignorance’ in England (that being, of course, the only source of difference of opinion with them). Finally, after listening with the utmost patience indefinitely—only devoutly wishing to kick over the table—I got mentally [sic] collared by Miss Peabody with an accusation of being ‘still incredulous’, to which I replied very frankly, that ‘certainly till I heard both sides I could form no definite opinion.’

Emerson was refreshing after the rest, inasmuch as, after speaking, he would allow you to answer.... A Miss Elizabeth Hoar told me she had seen Carlyle in London in 1862, and that he had said to her,—‘So you’re quarrelling out there? Why don’t you let the Southerners go to the devil with their niggers if they like, and you go to Heaven with your virtues if you can?’ Rather sensible, I thought,—from one point of view at any rate.”

There is a pleasant little letter from Emerson, written after this meeting:

“Concord. Monday 14th June. [1865.]

DEAR MISS BLAKE,

I am sorry to be so very slow in sending you the address of Mr. Fields’ good farmer in the White Mountains region. It is Selden C. Willey, Compton Village, 6 miles from Plymouth, New Hampshire. I looked for it immediately on my return from Mrs. Mann’s, but could not find it, and now today have stumbled on it in looking for something else. Tis probable that you may have seen Mr. Fields himself before this time. When I have found my right correspondent at Oberlin, I shall hope to bring you my letter in person.

With great regard, R. W. EMERSON.

Miss Blake.”

The diary continues:

“Everyone most wonderfully kind and helpful to us personally—lots of offers of introductions, etc. That nice Dr. Sewall very anxious that I should not tire myself out and ‘get sick’. By the bye one really can converse with her, I think.”

There is a kind little note from Dr. Sewall also:

“MY DEAR MISS BLAKE,

As usual this evening I enjoyed your society so much that I forgot to say half that I wanted to....

If you call on Mr. Emerson today, I think you had better call in the afternoon, as he told me he was engaged Wednesday and Saturday forenoons.

Don’t have any neuralgia when you come to the Hospital today, or I may want to try my Electromagnetic machine on your face. I have not seen Dr. Zakrzewska yet, but I want you to come early.

Yours sincerely, LUCY C. SEWALL.”

Dr. Lucy Sewall was at this time a young woman of 28, a worthy descendant of “a long line of truly noble ancestry.”[37] She held the appointment of Resident Physician to the New England Hospital for Women and Children (an institution which had been founded in great measure through the exertions of her father, the Hon. Samuel Sewall), but there was nothing about her to suggest that she had adopted what was at that time an unusual line of life for a woman. Singularly girlish in appearance, she was and remained throughout life so gentle and womanly that, until one knew her well, her reserves of strength were a source of repeated surprise. “So simple and humble and kindly,” writes S. J.-B. at this time,—“said she ‘_could_ not succeed in learning to think enough before she spoke about a case.’”

Footnote 37:

See _inter alia_ Whittier’s poem, “The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, 1697.”

No wonder S. J.-B. was attracted. A warm friendship sprang up between the two young women, a friendship by means of which S. J.-B. was introduced primarily to the world of Medicine, and, secondarily, to the wide question of Feminism. She had been living, of course, in a feminist world at home, and a very choice world of its kind; but here the movement had become more explicit, its aims were clearly defined and partially realized. It had, no doubt, lost a certain amount of charm in the process, but that is the fate of all movements the world over. They too have to be worked out “in the commonplace clay with which the world provides us.”

In any case S. J.-B. was profoundly influenced by the change of atmosphere. Her conception of woman’s work and woman’s sphere began to widen out. On June 22nd she writes to her Mother:

“We saw Miss Crocker the other day,—late Mathematical professor at Antioch,—and she impressed me extremely with her quiet dignity and wisdom, and her tremendous Mathematics,—I _should_ so like to study under her some day. I felt like an uppish dwarf beside some strong quiet giant.”

And a few days later:

“By the way that wonderful astronomer, Maria Mitchell, whom I told you we were going to see, is a _very_ nice woman—grand and able and strong and kindly.... She is to be a professor at Poughkeepsie, and, if we go there, I shall certainly hope to learn of her,—though I did not know that Astronomy would ever have come into my life. Any way it will be a great pleasure to know such a woman.”

On the same day she records in her diary:

“Sat for a couple of hours in Dr. Sewall’s dispensary this morning. Some 36 cases heard and helped more or less. Some coming with bright faces,—‘So much better, Doctor,’—some in pain enough, poor souls. Dr. Sewall with such a kindly ready sympathy, and such clear firm treatment for them all. Certainly the right woman in the right place, except in as far as she herself gets to look sadly fagged and tired sometimes.”

The state of S. J.-B.’s own health continued very unsatisfactory. “What is one to do,” she says, “when one has alternate days of ‘feeling like a tallow candle,’ and days of feeling rather grand and energetic, like yesterday, when my ‘book’ was begun with a bounce?” After watching her for some weeks, Dr. Sewall pronounced her “worn out in mind and body,” and advised a holiday among the hills until the excessive heat was over. So she paid a delightful visit to Professor and Mrs. Rogers at Lunenburg, and then went on to West Compton near the White Mountains. “The railway (a single line) cut through delicious woods with no fence or wall, just through the wildest glades full of ferns and pyrolas,— vistas of sun on fir and maple boles,—then again by the side of one lovely lake after another, a perfect prodigality of beauty.”

“Aug. 18th 1865. West Compton.

DARLING MOTHER,—I don’t think I shall be able to write by the next mail, as we are going for a few days’ excursion round the mountains, so I must send you off now as long a letter as I can manage, telling you what we have been doing just lately.

First and foremost, I have been coming in useful as ‘teamster’, in Yankee parlance, having been chiefly employed in driving my neighbours all about the country lately. You would have laughed, I think, had you seen my ‘span’ (pair of horses) the other day,—one brown, pretty high,—the other mouse coloured and some three inches lower, the most delightful variety prevailing in the harnessing and general appearance of the two. Behind these beauties came six of us in a big rough country ‘wagon’, all of painted wood,—two big seats fixed in a sort of open cart.

We went through _such_ a ford,—the Penningewassett River, and (when the horses didn’t bite each other) we got on grandly....”

“You haven’t the least idea what that word ‘woods’ means,—in England there are just a few acres of carefully preserved trees and ‘no trespassers allowed’. Here you plunge into a vast forest, miles and miles every way,—lucky if you can find a path at all, else guiding yourself by sun and stream and taking hours and hours to get a mile or two,—yet all through so grand, so green, and so delicious! If you could just have been with us yesterday! Every few minutes we found some great tree fallen across our path, or some black bog of decayed cedar or pine,—oh, the scents of those!—perfectly delicious;—and then round we had to go, creeping, jumping or gliding round the obstruction. Then we would come to some little clearing, and catch such views of the mountains we were shut in with,—then on again and hardly see daylight through the dense trees. And such mosses, such ferns, such berries!

Then over the river somehow from rock to rock, and such a scramble up among the cascades which came leaping down like liquid silver in the sunlight, and such pools we did so want to bathe in, and had to [refrain] for lack of time and towels! They called the distance 2½ or 3 miles, but we took just 3 hours to get there,—and then coming back pretty sharply in about half the time. The only grief to me was—what perhaps you will hardly sympathize in—that we didn’t come across any bear. There are a good many left in the woods and one hears every now and then of their being met, but they are getting few, and they are proportionately timid and modest, running off full speed if they see you. Wouldn’t it have been fun to see one?...

I think hardly anything strikes an Englisher more than the no-value of wood here. Over the water it’s half high treason to hurt a tree;—here, if you want a napkin-ring, you strip the bark off the first birch you come to and make a lot; or, if you take it into your head, set fire to the woods anywhere and have a bonfire of a dozen trees, and no one says a word. We have seen woods on fire over and over again, and no one says more than,—‘Oh, somebody’s fired the wood’; and the odd thing is it doesn’t seem to spread as one would expect.

One comes continually to clearings full of blackened stumps not yet grubbed up,—the beginning of a garden or house place perhaps. I want to see a great big forest fire some day,—and I only wish I might see a prairie on fire too; only that is said to be horribly dangerous. It is so funny to hear here, as when I was asking about a certain road (from St. Louis to California), ‘Yes, it’s the shortest, but the Indians are cross just now and have been scalping a lot of people there’!

Well, darling, we had such a drive home by starlight last night, and all enjoyed our day hugely. When we got in I suppose I walked slightly lame or something, for my greeting was,—‘I guess you’re tired, an’t you? You’re kind o’ waggling’!”

One is quite sorry to see the Boston postmark again; but the high spirits do not flag. “You don’t know,” she writes to her Mother, “what an immense thing it is for us to have got free admission to the Woman’s Hospital life here,—we are always doing something jolly together with the students and doctors,—all women, by the way.

Dr. Sewall is resident Physician, and is always asking us to spend jolly evenings there,—or to join them in going to theatres, etc. Yesterday we made an expedition in the evening to a famous place for ice-cream, 8 of us there were—4 M.D.s (one of whom is a splendid surgeon,—the first female surgeon I have heard of) two students and we two. After the ices we went back to the Hospital, and played a most ridiculous game of cards called ‘Muggins’, keeping us in roars of laughter half the time. Then Dr. Tyng (the surgeon) sang, and, among other things gave us a specimen of the ‘Shaker’ singing—with its very peculiar religious dance,—have you heard about the Shakers? I hope to see them and then I will tell you.

But can’t you understand how refreshing it is to slip into the bright life of all these working people—working hard all day, and then so ready for fun when work’s over? It reminds me of the full colour and life of the old London times when all we working women were together.”

So she utilised every opportunity of getting information likely to help in her study of the conditions of Women’s education. She regretted in after life that her dislike of ‘lion-hunting’ had prevented her from making—or cultivating—the acquaintance of well-known people who did not seem likely to be of direct help in her work. Not that she disdained the opportunities when they actually came within reach. Here is an interesting episode in the course of her wanderings:

“Sept. 9th. Went over to Concord, Mass. by 11 a.m. train. At the station found Waldo Emerson just fetching his wife and friends. I spoke to him and he very cordially asked us to ‘take our dinner’ with him. We accepted, first paying a visit to Mrs. Horace Mann and Miss Peabody. Mrs. Mann gave me a letter to Mr. Pennel (her nephew) at St. Louis, whither I am advised to go after Oberlin and Antioch perhaps. Poughkeepsie we must visit later, by wish of the President, Dr. Raymond.

Went on to Emerson’s to dinner. Was received by one of the daughters, Ellen,—simple and kindly, the ‘housekeeper’, I should think—and shown into a room with several people.... About 3 p.m. dinner served, more English-wise than most, though with a new Irish maid for waiter, who looked anxiously to ‘Ellen’ for orders. Another daughter, Edith (about to be married) and a son, Edward. They had sherry on the table, which I have only seen at the Rogers’ besides,... Pears and grapes,—partly the queer sage grapes with tarry flavour,—on a pretty basket, large and shallow.

Mr. Emerson struck me as having one of the sweetest expressions I have ever seen on a man’s mouth. He was very kind in offering help. We talked besides a little about Swedenborg, for whom he seemed to have some admiration. ‘To be read as one reads a poet’s ideas,—not critically,’ he said, and spoke of the pre-inspiration works on science, etc., as really valuable.

Mrs. Emerson talked a little about ‘women’s questions’, female franchise, etc.—and spoke of the wonderful blinding power of habit,—as in slavery question,—looking to Christianity in its advance to set all to rights.

I remarked that few had done more harm to the cause than St. Paul by some of his words. She replied very truly that the fault lay rather in those who would rigidly apply such words and consider them binding out of all connection of time and place.”

It was left to a later friend to point out that St. Paul showed himself in this respect the John Stuart Mill of his day when he asserted that ‘in Jesus Christ is neither male nor female.’

“Speaking a little to an old schoolfellow of Emerson’s he told me it was hard for anyone to say what Emerson’s opinions were. I said I had heard of him as a pantheist; he said at any rate he was one of the best of men and had been from boyhood up.”

A few days later she visited Niagara,—“the only ‘pleasure’ thing” she tells her Mother, “I _resolved_ to do if possible. We hope to spend next Sunday there,—not a bad church, will it be?” From Niagara she writes to Mrs. Unwin:

“Sept. 17th. 1865. Niagara.

MY DEAR LUCY,

I congratulate you with all my heart on the birth of your little son! I think by this time you will have forgotten all doubts and difficulties, and all but pleasant feelings of responsibility, in your great content, have you not? God very seldom sends us either duties or blessings without showing us how to fulfil and enjoy and use them, and I do not doubt but you will have found in your own case all sorts of new powers and instincts develop with the need of them, and will have by this time a pretty definite idea ‘What to do with a baby’—Is it not so?...

I wish there existed a visual telegraph (if such a phrase may be coined) and that I could give you a glimpse of the scene I have in front of me, and which is continually stealing my eyes from my paper. No less than Niagara in its full glory!—and what that glory is I don’t think any _but_ eyes can tell. I have seen a good deal of beauty and grandeur in my life, in Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, etc., but I think never anything so wonderfully, bewitchingly, grandly beautifully as this. People talk of being disappointed in Niagara, but I think it can only be because, for the first moment, the enormous width of the Falls (900 feet in one case, 2000 in the other,—separated by an island) prevents their recognizing their height as well, or else they have not got the right natures to admire with! (and I think that last is oftener the case than people think).

It gives one most wonderfully the feeling of power and immensity,—the sort of feeling that was [expressed] long ago, ‘When I consider the work of Thy fingers, what is man that Thou are mindful of him?’—and yet the feeling of infinite beauty and harmony too. Before leaving we go under the Falls, and into the ‘Cave of the Winds’ behind a vast curtain of water, and that I think must give one almost more strongly still the impression of might and vastness. It is very little use to talk about it any more, I wish you could see it!

Thank you very much for writing to my Mother about A. I hope she will get away from her present uncomfortable place,—it would give me great pleasure if she came to you. Only I warn you I shall claim her some day!

Goodbye, dear child. With all good wishes for you and yours, I am ever

Yours very sincerely, S. L. JEX-BLAKE.”

From Niagara she went via Cleveland to Oberlin, and so began the tour which she afterwards described in _A Visit to some American Schools and Colleges_ (published by Macmillan in 1867). She had been very kindly advised by Dr. Hill, the President of Harvard, as to the Colleges best worth visiting, and the experience proved both interesting and useful. At Oberlin the two sexes were almost equally represented, and “coloured” students formed about a third of the whole number. “In the year of my visit,” she writes, “it so happened that the only woman who graduated was a coloured girl, originally a slave, who had not even then paid her full ransom to her former owners.” A considerable proportion of students of both sexes supported themselves wholly or in part by doing the domestic work of the establishment. Manners were rather rough even for the America of those days, but the standard of behaviour was high, and the religious atmosphere almost overwhelming.

From Oberlin she went on to Hillsdale, St. Louis, and Antioch (at Yellow Springs in Ohio) spending a few days or weeks at each; and afterwards she visited a number of schools. What impressed her perhaps more than anything else was the success with which the joint education of men and women was carried on, and this impression was destined to play its part in the later struggles of her life.

“If anyone asks you again about my views of comparative English and American teaching,” she writes to her Mother, “I suppose I may say that I believe on the whole American girls _are_ more thoroughly, and especially more universally, taught fundamental things. They learn Mathematics more thoroughly, and Latin more invariably; their knowledge of modern languages is decidedly inferior (very naturally, being so far from France, Germany, etc.) and their English and their manners both less polished. But I should think a decidedly smaller number of them are able to manage to grow up _quite_ ignorant!” It annoyed her a good deal that, in the matter of pronunciation, an American will always ask you “what dictionary you go by,” and seems quite unable to understand the unwritten law of language which in England reigns supreme, and from which, if a dictionary differs, it simply condemns itself.

Her birthday inspired a breezy letter from her brother:

“13 Sussex Square, Brighton. Jan. 21. 1866.

MY DEAR SOPHY,

Many happy returns of your 26th birthday, as they would say in Ireland: and may they ache find you younger and fresher!

We have been enjoying three very fresh but windy weeks here; and are now leaving tomorrow for Rugby. We leave Violet, Katharine and Netta here, however, as they are only half through measles....

We have ridden a good deal, been with the hounds more than usual; and not read much. Lecky on Rationalism is the best book I have read lately, of the fairly solid sort; Swinburne’s Atalanta the best new poem; Citoyenne Jacqueline the best new novel; Mr. ——’s the worst stale sermons. Is there anything good out in American literature of late? Artemus Ward is good in his line, but his line is audacious.

I should like six months in America immensely; locomotive, with introductions, I don’t know the politics of the people you are with or have been with; but I was always a Northerner.... I wonder how the Mexican business will end: and cannot pretend to guess: but I hope Louis Napoleon ... will soon withdraw his troops, and Maximilian will collapse. We are on the eve of a noisy session, I expect; Home Office stung by reform into a queer tarantula, and Colonial secretaries badgered about Jamaica by both sides of the House. I cannot pretend to judge till we get more evidence: but as yet none has turned up which in my eyes justifies the execution of Gordon—who for all that was probably deep.... Have I wearied you out with politics? or have you not read so far?

With love from us all, I am your affecte brother, T. W. JEX-BLAKE.”

She answered the letter while the stimulus of it was fresh:

“DEAR TOM,

Many thanks for your birthday letter. Though they came rather late, I got quite a budget at last.

I quite agree that you ought to come and see America,—both its people and its scenery. It’s a queer study in all ways, one finds so much to like and respect, and so much that one is inclined to laugh at. People are certainly less tied and bound by the chain of ‘on dit’, on this side the water, and that tells more for good than for evil, I think; but on the other hand it lets people who are so inclined fall into overgrown eccentricities, and set at nought to an alarming extent all rules of grammar and etiquette when they don’t suit. In fact I have not found more than three or four Americans altogether who talk what we should consider cultivated English, or behave as if they had been in what we call cultivated society. They’ll pick their teeth while they talk to you (so will the shopmen—‘store clerks’, if you please,— while they serve you) spit within an inch of you, eat things in the streets while walking with you, perhaps whistle and sing ditto; talk about what they ‘had ought to do’, say they should ‘admire to do so and so for you’ or ask if they shall ‘turn out the tea,’ etc. And all this from men who have been through College, and women who know more Mathematics, Latin, Greek and Philosophy than I dare think about. In fact there’s a very curious contrast in the much higher level of learning and the much lower level of outward signs of refinement in American as compared with English averages.

I’m afraid that while we may have some few hundreds better educated,— more ‘elegant scholars’—than any in America, we must confess that there is here a very much higher percentage of fairly well read and well educated people than with us. I notice this specially among the girls—as to the men I know less. But almost all girls here have studied a good deal things few English girls go much into—specially Mathematics and natural science.

Then I am sure no one ought to speak more highly than I of American kindness and hospitality,—I am very much afraid few foreigners would have found in England such a welcome as I met with here. People were so cordially kind in helping me in all sorts of ways.... There seems to me much less of the spirit of ‘pride of office,’ etc., much more readiness to admit one everywhere to see everything, and to be ready to help without standing too much on one’s dignity. I found this specially in the case of Dr. Hill, President of Harvard University, the first in America—and the same in the case of the presidents of the colleges for both sexes, Oberlin, Hillsdale, and Antioch.

I don’t know whether you will care for all these results of my observations, but your mention of America and wish to see it drew them out.

As to politics, I knew very little about them before I came, and had a faint sort of prejudice in favour of the South, believing the North to be very insincere about slavery, etc. I now think that the Anti- slavery cry _has_ been used most shamelessly for private and political ends by some, but that there is at the heart of Yankeedom a strong true heart beating earnestly in favour of liberty for negroes as well as whites, and that there are and have been very many most sincerely bent on very unselfish ends, and a great deal of real patriotism (on both sides probably) evolved by the war.

I am chiefly with some of the very best of the Anti-slavery people. The Sewalls used to shelter escaped negroes when to do so was a penal offence.

I saw Lecky’s Rationalism (which ought rather to be called the History of Reasonableness) before I left England, but only read part of it. I first found it on Miss Cobbe’s table, and liked it very much. I don’t know of any great American books lately,—they pirate almost everything English.

I think the English here must be feeling pretty badly about Jamaican affairs,—I am. They say the French troops are certainly to evacuate Mexico now....

I hope Hetty got thanked for her note a little while ago,—this letter is meant as much for her as for you, though I forgot to begin it so. Love to the bairns. I suppose I shall scarcely know them when I get back.

Your aff. sister, S. L. J.-B.”