CHAPTER III

PATIENTS AND FRIENDS

It was hard to go back to the house in Manor Place, so full of associations, and, as soon as might be, S. J.-B. and Miss Du Pre removed to Bruntsfield Lodge, a roomy, rambling old house[146] with a shady, high-walled garden, standing high on the south side of Edinburgh, overlooking Bruntsfield Links. The sunny rooms and the possibility of stepping out into quiet greenness were worth a fortune to the strained nerves and over-active brain.

Footnote 146:

This house is now the picturesque nucleus of the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children.

“You will be glad to hear that I am much stronger,” S. J.-B. writes to Dr. Sewall in September 1883, “and am sleeping excellently. I have just begun also to take short rides, and I do not think they tire me too much.”

Here then she began the life of comparative seclusion and active beneficence which was to last for sixteen years. The keynote of her existence was sharing, taking others with her, and the joy of sharing this comfortable house and garden was very great.

Miss Du Pre’s absence is the occasion for some playful letters written quite in a patriarchal spirit:

“August 25th. [1883.]

... _I_ have had an addition to my family as well as Mrs. B.,—though it isn’t yet in the _Times_ first column,—viz. a delightfully comic small dog, white with one black eye, whom I have christened Toby, and whom I bought from the Home for Lost Dogs for the large sum of 2s. 6d. The police take stray dogs there, and if no one claims them, or buys them, they are killed; so this little fellow has escaped by the skin of his teeth, in virtue of his supposed excellences in the cat-chasing line![147] Has cottoned up to me most amusingly—followed me about all day, and whined at the door when shut out....

The two boys are delighted, of course,—especially A., who declares Mr. Toby to be the moral of a dog for whom his late master ‘wouldn’t take £100.’ Nice profit wouldn’t it be if I clear £99. 17s. 6d.!

Lest the household should be too full, I have sent off a member,—viz., White Angel, to grass for a week at Currie,—H. being so overjoyed at being let ride him out that cook declared he ‘couldn’t eat his lunch‘! He walked back (6 miles) in 1¾ hr., not bad, was it?

Miss A. is coming tonight,—Mrs. J. went this afternoon. By the bye on Thursday she asked me to ‘see Baby for a minute,’ and I found the child white and out of sorts, rather feverish, etc., and overjoyed Mrs. J. by prescribing ‘a little Bruntsfield’. So she has been out here for 2 days, tumbling in the hay and delighting Ann’s heart. She is so fond of children.

I also sent Mrs. S. off to Brackenrigg yesterday, as I decided she did want a change before beginning a winter’s work. The fare was 17s. 4d., and I gave her the rest of £4, which will pay everything for 10 days, with 5s. or 6s. to spare. I haven’t heard from her yet, but I am sure she will be in the seventh heaven.

Probably she will see Miss Anthony there,—she went the previous day....

I think it _was very_ good of you to ask for the Baring votes!...”

Footnote 147:

S. J.-B. made great friends with the birds in her garden, and cats were accordingly taboo.

“Sept. 4th.

... Mrs. S. lunched here today, and says she feels infinitely better for the change,—things no longer worry her in the same way. She tells me that the red-room gentleman was back,[148]—and that being confined to bed one day, he evidently heard Miss Anthony haranguing on Women’s Rights in the next room,—and Mrs. W. told them that he had asked ‘when those two ladies were going,—for he heard enough to know they were men-haters, and _he_ was a woman hater!”

Footnote 148:

S. J.-B. and Miss Du Pre had visited the same hotel that summer.

“Sept. 9th.

I’ve had another addition to my family,—_not_ a permanent one this time! A. J. was very anxious not to catch scarlet fever so as to be thrown back for his examinations, etc., and so I have taken him in for a few days, and given him ——’s room upstairs. (Do you think W. is in any danger?) He seems a very nice lad, but by no means strong. He is so very pleased with the quiet,—he says he can sleep _so_ much better. Now a lad of his age ought to be able to sleep in any row!”

“Sept. 13th.

... The grapes are getting on famously, some will be ripe within a week I think, but they will be rather small this year.”

“Sept. 23rd.

You needn’t have asked so meekly for ‘2 or 3 grapes’. We have cut none yet, but when they first began to colour, the most forward bunch was dubbed ‘Miss Du Pre’s,’—and for the last 10 days the household might be seen every morning with upturned chins gazing to see ‘if Miss Du Pre’s bunch is ready’,—H. going up the ladder and hanging in all sorts of odd positions to look at it all round.

The combined wisdom has decided to cut it tomorrow—in spite of a red berry or two which won’t get right,—so probably you will get it on Wednesday morning by P.P. Be sure to tell me how it travels.”

The first few months in the new house were a time of comparative leisure, and S. J.-B.’s friends received letters less telegraphic in their succinctness than they afterwards tended to become. The following is to Mrs. Brander, who (when Miss Isobel Bain) had accompanied S. J.-B. to America:

“Sept. 26th. [1883.]

DEAREST BEL,

I wish you could peep in and see my new house now that it is fairly in order. I think the quiet and airiness will be of very great value to me. I have felt much better since I came here....

You have so often wished for good medical women in India that you must now be pleased to have your wish granted. I don’t know if you know Mrs. Scharlieb who is just entering on practice at Madras, but, if you don’t, I wish you would go and call on her, and give my card. I do not know her personally, but I have corresponded with her, and respect her much for the gallant way in which she got her education, first at Madras and then coming to England to perfect herself. She passed the very difficult examinations of the University of London (M.B. and B.S.) with great distinction, and won the gold medal in Obstetrics from the whole University....

Have you heard also that Dr. Edith Pechey is going to settle at Bombay? She has been invited to do so by a committee of native gentlemen, who guarantee her an income and find her a hospital....

I am very sorry to lose her from England, but very glad to have so admirable a representative in India. She always wins golden opinions and does such excellent work. I do hope the Government will do something for her. I have just written to Lord Ripon about her.

You know I suppose that Mr. Fawcett has appointed a medical woman (Miss Shove) as medical officer to the women post office clerks, with £350 a year. It is an immense step in public opinion.

I am getting on very well here, but I begin to feel I am getting old. My hair is so grey!...

Dear old Mrs. Brander came to see me the other day, looking as nice as ever, ... I think I care more and more for old people’s happiness as compared to young, though the world is hard enough for them too sometimes,—and hardest of all I sometimes think for the middle-aged folks who have outlived the spring and energy of youth and not reached the calm of age. How much pain one sees in the world!

I hope _your_ life is getting easier and happier every year, dear child. Tell me all about yourself some day....

Yours affectionately, S. J.-B.”

She was planning a new edition of her book, _Medical Women_, at this time, and she wrote to Mr. Osler to ask for statistics as to the percentage of women, as compared with men, who had so far passed the examinations of the University of London. In reply to his information she writes:

“Feb. 3rd. 1884.

DEAR MR. OSLER,

I can hardly express strongly enough how grateful I am both to you and to Mr. Milman, for the very valuable tables of numbers sent me....

Please do not doubt for a moment that I quite agree with you that it is unfair to compare ‘picked women’ (i.e. really in earnest) and ‘unpicked men’. I have said so repeatedly. But you must remember that a _very_ few years ago I had a very hard fight to get it admitted as a possibility that _some_ women _might_ do as good work as men. In ‘Visits to American Schools’ (published 1867) I wrote with at least sufficient diffidence,—‘Whether most women would be capable of the amount of study required, for instance, for one of our University degrees, I really do not know,’ etc. My one contention has been all along,—‘Give a fair field and _try_’— and no one can exaggerate the gratitude that all women ought to feel to the University of London for giving that field.

At the same time, while quite conceding that ‘percentages’ need correction by certain considerations on the men’s side,—youth, want of choice, etc.,—you must not forget that women are quite as much weighted in other ways,—e.g. by the greater reluctance of parents to spend money on their education, and the more inconsiderate claims made on their time, etc., at home, inferior early teaching, etc., so that after all one set of difficulties go far to balance another.

From a medical point of view my chief anxiety now is how women are going to stand the strain; I am _very_ much afraid of seeing the movement discredited by the breakdown in health of girls who begin too young, or with inadequate physical stamina, or who try to ‘burn the candle at both ends’ by combining society or home duties with serious study.

However, I must not trespass longer on your time and kind patience, and with repeated thanks, I remain,

Yours very gratefully, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

This subject of the education of girls had been brought prominently before her mind by the breakdown of a rarely gifted young friend. S. J.-B. had some great talks on the subject with Miss Buss and others, and she wrote to various papers about the danger of over-pressure. “The headmistresses have a difficult problem before them,” she says, “but it has got to be faced.”

As a matter of fact the problem was destined to be solved abundantly in due course by the development of games and physical culture generally,—all that side of life for the lack of which she herself had suffered so terribly.

She was specially interested, of course, in the daughters of her old friends, and, of these, Hermione Unwin and Katie Ballantyne held a special place in her regard. To the former she writes:

“July 29th. 1884.

MY DEAR HERMIE,

Thank you for sending me your examination papers. I am very glad that you passed so successfully. What now interests me most is to know to what use all this work is to be turned, for after all knowledge is noblest when it becomes an instrument of work beyond itself. Have you any tastes or wishes, or any thought of any special kind of work?

I daresay that after all this study the best thing you can do is to rest on your oars for six months or a year, but during that time I hope you will be thinking in what way you can turn yourself to best account. There is so much that needs doing in the world, and it is such a privilege to help in the doing of it. I hope you will write and tell me when you have any definite thoughts on the subject.

I have already had my holiday for this year, having spent June in driving about (with the white pony) in the Perthshire highlands with my friend, Miss Du Pre. I think there is hardly any kind of holiday that rests one so much. You should persuade your Father to take you all in a waggonette, a long drive into Scotland or to the English Lakes. If you should decide on Scotland, I should hope to find this house used as a stopping-place. I think I could take you all in pretty comfortably.

Remember me very kindly to Mr. Unwin, and believe me

Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

Here is an interesting letter to an old friend whose husband’s distinguished career separated her for the time from a dearly-loved daughter:

“I much enjoyed seeing her for the flying visit which was all she vouchsafed me, and I am _delighted_ to see how very much she is improved,—very much more healthy in mind and body all round....

She amused me much by plunging headlong into some theological difficulties,—which reminded me of how she (aged 6!) used to harass you about the Trinity. Her great trouble seems to be that she can’t feel sure the world is governed by a beneficent and omnipotent God,—she thinks there is so much pain in it which wouldn’t be allowed unless God either _didn’t wish_ to help it, or _couldn’t_ help it. That has never been my difficulty,—I have always had such a devout belief in the possible blessing of pain,—

‘Because all noblest things are born In agony.’

Do you remember Miss Cobbe’s hymn?

However she asked me if _I_ felt sure the world was governed, etc., and I said frankly that I hadn’t absolutely made up my mind,—that it seemed to me we had very small means of being ‘sure’ of anything,—but that I thought, if there was a Ruler both good and all powerful, it was at least perfectly conceivable that He might allow all the pain, etc., partly because the very theory of free will involved possibilities of evil with its consequences which not even Omnipotence could avert, and partly because He might see that pain was at any given moment the very best thing for the person who suffered it.

Then she went off to,—Did I think it _possible_ that any Being could follow out the lives of millions of creatures at once, etc.,—to which I said that certainly I couldn’t conceive how it should be possible; but neither could I conceive many other things that yet we knew to be scientific truths,—e.g. that our whole earth could be swallowed up in one of the ‘spots’ of the sun, and not fill up the spot, and that that very sun is only a unit in a myriad of worlds whose immensities simply reduce us to silence.

However I didn’t mean to inflict a réchauffé of all this upon you, though I think you will like to know how the child’s mind is working. Let it work!—being in a wholesome atmosphere of love and labour, she will learn all sorts of practical replies to theoretical difficulties, and come to no harm.”

Interesting, as bearing on the above, is another letter written to someone else about the same time:

“It is a double principle with me never to bring forward theological questions, and never to seek to change the opinions of anyone who is satisfied with his or her own; and on the other hand to be always ready to say exactly what I think myself about any given point to any intelligent person who cares to ask me the question, and to say frankly where I feel that I know nothing. I do not think anyone can possibly be more conscious than I of the immense vastness and difficulty of questions that the general public answer glibly offhand, and of my own utter incompetency to decide in the abstract ‘what is truth’. Practically I think one is generally able to see one’s own duty day by day, and probably Browning is right—

‘... more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act tomorrow what he learns today.’

Beyond that, I suppose that all that any of us can do is to be very chary of either asserting or denying, but to strive to keep our whole souls open to every ray of light we can get, and hope some day to learn everything that it is needful for us to know. Personally I am always getting to feel that opinions matter less and less, and motives and feelings more and more.

Excuse this long dissertation and believe me,

Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

In December 1885 she writes to Miss Du Pre:

“Yes, we shall miss poor old X. sadly. It does seem pathetic, doesn’t it?—and yet don’t you think it is something to be taken away just when you _have_ attained your highest ambition?... The first thing I thought,—as it almost always is,—was, I wonder what he thinks now that he ‘knows what Rhamses knows’. It always does strike me so very curiously when someone who has never, I suppose, thought half as much as I about the mysteries of life and death, goes in in front of me,—if there is any ‘going in’. I thought it so very strongly about Vanderbilt. How _will_ he get on where everything isn’t reckoned as on the Stock Exchange?”

Although the new house was certainly not in a central position, S. J.-B.’s practice steadily grew. As the first woman doctor in Scotland, she had, as she had told Sir Thomas Barlow, numerous cases that had long gone untreated, and she was the recipient of many a pent-up confidence. The Edinburgh that criticized her would have been surprised if it had known some of the secrets that lay, so safely, in her keeping. She was often called upon to be a Mother Confessor, and, although she always declared that “one profession is enough for one person,” her practice was by no means so rigid in this respect as was her theory. Many strange problems were discussed in that quiet consulting-room, with its book-lined walls and green spaces outside. To the end of life her impulsiveness led her into mistakes for which she had to suffer, but her advice to others was extraordinarily sane and good. Yet the idealist in her never slept. “I took Colani from the shelf,” she says on one occasion, “and read, ‘Cast _thyself_ down,—for the devil can suggest; compel can he never.’”

She was often asked, too, to take a resident patient who wished to have her own suite of rooms and sometimes her own attendant. More than one of these patients became personal friends.

She of course received high fees for cases of this kind, but she often had resident patients who paid no fees at all. Some governess who could not get well in dreary lodgings would be simply wrapped up in blankets and carried off in the brougham—or was it on a comet’s tail?—a messenger having been sent up to the house,—“Have blue room ready in half-an-hour. Am bringing patient.”[149]

Footnote 149:

“Ah,” said an old servant in later years. “We did see life in that house!”

“I wonder,” writes a patient at this time, “if you have any idea how pleasant it is to be lifted on somebody’s shoulders and carried away from the shadows of your own life into the brightness of theirs. No I do not think you can have; you do not seem to have dwelt in the shadows.”

And another writes,

“I know you will believe me when I say that I have rarely, if ever, been so _supremely_ happy as during the past few weeks. The feeling of peace and comfort was so delicious, and I only wish I could prove myself just a little worthy of all I have enjoyed.”

We have seen how on one occasion she took in a lad who could not afford to risk incurring the infection of scarlet fever. On another occasion, when visiting a patient, she was asked to see a boy of ten, who had unluckily fallen ill while paying a short visit to the house. His hostess did not understand boys, and he was having an uncomfortable time. His plight roused all the boy—and there was plenty of it—in S. J.-B. She carried him off, mothered him, took him for drives when she could, got him well, and apparently made him happy. At all events, when the time came to say Goodbye, he flung his arms round her neck and kissed her!

There are some men who are born with an instinctive knowledge of the right thing to do in unusual circumstances.

Most useful was the comet’s tail in cases where some overworked brain was on the point of a breakdown, where a worry was developing into an _idée fixe_, and threatening to drive the patient mad. S. J.-B. would carry the patient off, regardless of possible developments more disconcerting even than an outbreak of scarlet fever in her house, tend her, feed her up, make her sleep, sympathize with her, bully her, laugh at her, till the patient was ready to fall into line and laugh at herself. Some of these “cures” were extraordinarily rapid and complete, and there is no record of a single failure.

She never heard of any over-weighted woman or child without asking herself whether she could lift the burden.

“DEAR CARRY,”—she writes to her sister about this time—“... I don’t like the idea of our teacher looking ‘pale and anxious’,—do you know if she has any special troubles?—or is likely to be short of money? Has she relations with whom she spends her holidays? or is she at Bettws now?—When do the holidays begin and end? What pay has she now?—Has it been raised lately?—What is her name and nation?

A sad number of questions, but very short replies will suffice.

Your aff. sister, S. J.-B.”

It was partly because she had so many guests of this kind that she made it an absolute rule that none of her servants were to receive gratuities from visitors,—a rule that some of the visitors disliked extremely, and even refused to submit to. Such cases sometimes led to an amusing breeze of correspondence of which the following is a sample:

“SIR,

Well acquainted as I am with your many and great iniquities, I confess that I did _not_ expect you wantonly to abuse our humble hospitality by deliberately inciting our household to rebellion against constituted authority as distinctly announced to you by written warning on the mantel-piece.[150] Manifold as are the notorious vices of the Conservative mind, I _had_ supposed it to have some slight reverence for law, national or domestic. In future I shall know better.

Sir, the humble but incorruptible member of my household whose integrity you sought to corrupt, begs me to re-inclose to you the accompanying lucre (2s. 6d.), of whose history you so falsely pretended yourself ignorant, and as I see no reason why I should be impoverished in consequence of your evil doings, _I_ request you to repay me on your return from the continent the commission charged by H.M. Government (viz. ½d.) upon the enclosed remittance.

I am Sir, Yours more in sorrow than in anger, S. J.-B.”

Footnote 150:

“_On est prié de ne rien donner aux domestiqúes._”

The postal order was indignantly returned, with a request to do what she liked with it, so she at once sent it to the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, directing the secretary to forward the receipt to her refractory Conservative guest!

Notwithstanding this, and other differences of opinion, he paid many more visits to her house, and for the future contrived usually, at least, to elude her vigilance.

She used to consult him in all sorts of legal difficulties, and he replied with unfailing patience.

“DEAR JAMES,”—she wrote on one occasion,—“I want to make a codicil, leaving some money to ..., the income to her for life,— the capital between her daughters. Will you please tell me the simplest words in which I can do this?”

In sending a rough draft, he inserted the words,—“if only one such daughter.”

“Of course I can put in ‘if only one such daughter,’ if you like,” she replied, “but at present there are seven!”

The initial mistake, of course, was hers, and it was a kind of mistake that was very unusual with her.

Her correspondence was very large,—so large that she never had time to write a “proper letter about ‘Shakespeare and the musical glasses’,” as she would have said. To her most intimate friends she wrote with spontaneous charm,—letters circumstantial, tender, nonsensical, as the case might be. “Do you _ever_ write any letters that would look well in your memoir?” asks Miss Du Pre. “I begin to be anxious about that book. It seems to me that it will be so fearfully dull,—unless your diaries ... prove to be amusing.”

On the other hand, strangers consulted her about manifold schemes and perplexities, and she always asked herself how she could help.

“Dear Madam,” wrote one of these, “As you sit alone in the evening with the curtains drawn, imagine that a woman steals into your room, _hunted to death by men_. I am that woman....”

Even this sensational beginning did not put S. J.-B. off, and it was weeks before she allowed herself to be persuaded—by Dr. Pechey and Miss Du Pre—that the case was one for Dr. Clouston rather than for her.

* * * * *

But it was in her Dispensary, with working women and girls, that one saw her, perhaps, at her best. She was so vital, so sympathetic, yet so full of humour and common sense that the regular provident patients were devoted to her. They knew there was nothing to be gained by arguing. “Well, I must just take my scolding,” they would say resignedly. So keenly did she sympathize with their difficulty in following out her directions in their own homes that in 1885 she added a few beds to the Dispensary, and thus formed the nucleus of the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children, which has since grown to great things and has been honoured by a visit from the Queen.

Where the case was serious, and the remedy lay in the husband’s hands, S. J.-B. always took the bull by the horns. “Ask him to come and have a little talk with me,” she would say breezily. “Tell him I can see him at such and such hours.” And he would come!

She was admirably fitted for work of this kind. No woman was ever more strictly fair. An injured husband was no less—and no more—sure of her sympathy than was an injured wife.

And, of course, it was the old and feeble who at once found the radiant side of her.

“The thanks and blessings of old J. G.—85—bring a rush of tears,— ‘Ah, somebody be good to my old lady!’

And yet I suppose she may be ‘old’ no longer, but young and strong and bright, and sorry for _my_ weakness and weariness,—

‘waits on the hills of Paradise For her children’s coming feet.’”

She seldom rose quite above this sense of effort and weariness, though few would have guessed it. “I always get so much good from being with you,” writes Lady Jenkinson,—“body and soul—especially soul.... I wish _you_ would ’fess when you feel downcast.”

In her inmost circle, of course, she did ’fess, pretty often. “Not strong enough for the place, John,” she used often to quote whimsically from _Punch_. And here is an interesting bit of heresy in a letter to Dr. Sewall—

“I don’t at all agree by the bye with your theory that ‘there is nothing like work for producing real happiness.’ I don’t find that it has even any tendency to produce it, though of course one _must_ work if one is able. ‘Otherwise she drops at once below the dignity of man,’—so says Aurora Leigh.

To quote Mrs. Browning again,—‘What’s the best thing in the world?—Something _out of it_ I think.’”

The reader will not need to be told that the poetry of her nature had not been crushed out by that long fight. Far from it. All through the strenuous days she had been supported by the very poems she had repeated by the fireside in Sussex Square, but the store had grown till her repertory must have been nearly unique. To many passages from the Psalms and Isaiah, George Herbert, Trench, Alford and others, she had added a harvest from Whittier, Emerson, Lowell and divers less known American poets. She loved her Tennyson and Browning too—_Abt Vogler_ and _Rabbi Ben Ezra_—but indeed the “poetry book-case” included a very catholic range, from Macaulay’s _Lays_ to Swinburne and Christina Rossetti, with a corner for Jean Ingelow and for Mrs. Hamilton King. We have seen the store she set in her youth on some of Sadie’s Poems. No one who has ever heard it will forget how the “pathetic voice” would repeat:

“Is it so, O Christ in Heaven, that the highest suffer most? That the strongest wander farthest, and more hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?— ‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.‘”

or again,

“No, no, by all the martyrs, and the dear dead Christ; By the long bright roll of those whom joy enticed With her myriad blandishments, but could not win. Who would fight for victory, but would not sin.

By these our elder brothers who have gone before, And have left their trail of light upon our shore. We can see the glory of a seeming shame, We can feel the fulness of an empty name.”

It was recitations like this that formed the nucleus of the “incomparable evenings in the Doctor’s Study” to which Dr. Lillie Saville referred (see pp. 390-1, footnote). When life was not too exacting—and sometimes when it was—such evenings were very frequent, and they were a great refreshment after the burden and heat of the day.

* * * * *

She derived much relaxation, too, from the best of the unceasing current that flows through the circulating libraries. Her brief criticisms of books are often interesting. She was disappointed in George Eliot’s _Life_, because the long series of letters was not sufficiently welded together by narrative. Of the Carlyles she agreed with Mrs. Oliphant that “there was a great deal of love on both sides,—with very raw nerves.” Of two books she confessed to Miss Du Pre that she “sobbed over them like a baby,”—one was _Laetus Sorte Mea_, the other _The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen_.