CHAPTER IV

PUBLIC LIFE

It is not to be supposed that the “cataracts and breaks” were a thing of the past. There were many who found S. J.-B. a delightful person to work with, but even they had no difficulty in seeing how it was that others had a different experience.

“But the Doctor is _nearly always right_,” said one of her assistants in later years, “when she differs from other people.” And this was perfectly true. She _was_ nearly always right; but the few times she was wrong were sufficient in many quarters to give the dog the proverbial “bad name.”

Moreover, one must frankly admit that her rightness was often too uncompromising, too business-like, too far in advance of what other people could be expected to agree with, too inconsiderate of ordinary human frailty. “You treat other people like pawns,” Miss Du Pre used to tell her, but, although she quoted the remark, she never seemed really to grasp it.

During the first few years of her life at Bruntsfield Lodge she took a great interest in local women’s questions. She was a moving spirit in the organization of one or two large suffrage meetings, and in the laborious propagandism and canvassing involved in the election of women as poor law guardians. Evidence of the thoroughness of her work persists to this day; but it was not always appreciated by the Edinburgh ladies who coöperated with her. They thought her so big and masterful that nobody else got a chance. It was just as well that her own special work absorbed her more and more. In 1884 she had written for Macmillan (at the instigation of her friend Mrs. S. R. Gardiner) a useful little book on _The Care of Infants_, which was warmly received by the profession and by a considerable public, and she was steadily taking notes for a second edition of her _Medical Women_, which should bring the narrative down to the date of publication.

Public affairs, too, demanded their share of interest. That weary Medical Bill kept cropping up at intervals, and S. J.-B. was often appealed to privately by members of parliament and others for information and advice. They were well aware, of course, that her main interest was to safeguard the rights and privileges of women, but they also knew something of her mental acumen and thoroughness of method. Moreover, she was unconnected with any of the great vested interests which constituted the great stumbling block in the way of any Bill. There is a telegram extant addressed to her by the President of the Edinburgh College of Physicians who had gone up to London to watch the debate,—“Please wire Mr. Stansfeld to be sure to be here in time to secure dropping of bill proposed.”

Towards the end of 1884, the Edinburgh Extra-Mural School made an effort towards incorporation, and memorialized the Privy Council to grant them a Charter. S. J.-B. was anxious to take advantage of this opportunity to raise again the question of the admission of women to medical education in Scotland, especially as, by this time, the various missionary bodies were quite alive to the importance of the subject.

“The Free Church are also willing to move,” she writes to Mr. Stansfeld on November 20th, “and they wish to memorialize the Privy Council direct, and to request that any Charter granted may _not exclude_ women, but make it at least optional for the College to admit them. To my intense amusement the request has just come to me that I will ‘draft’ such a memorial, but I have not the remotest idea how even to address the Privy Council!”

It was not only the Free Church that asked her help. The lecturers, mindful of her power of enlisting the sympathy of statesmen in the past, also begged her to use her influence in high quarters, and, through the National Association, to present a petition to the Privy Council. Mr. Stansfeld was helpful as ever, advising her to interview Lord Carlingford, from whom she had a gracious reception. “But the primary condition must be,” she writes to Dr. Littlejohn, “that the Charter distinctly commits the College to the admission of women on equal terms. If this is not approved, the whole thing falls to the ground.”

The reader of the foregoing chapters might not unnaturally be prepared to hear that the College was duly incorporated, and that the women were left in the lurch; but it was the unexpected that happened. The effort of the Extra-Mural School to achieve incorporation failed, but the examining bodies for which the School existed, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, decided a few months later to admit women. We may reasonably suppose that the renewed discussion of the whole question had not been in vain, but, so far as S. J.-B. was concerned, it was a case of the seed cast into the ground, which springs and grows up “he knoweth not how.” On March 17th, 1885, she writes to Dr. Pechey:

“Meanwhile I have two splendid pieces of news to send you, if they have not yet reached you,—viz. (1) The Irish College of Surgeons has not only opened all its examinations, and even its fellowships, to women, but also all the classes in its School,— making separate arrangements for Practical Anatomy only. (2) More wonderful still, the Scottish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh and Glasgow (now combined to give one ‘Triple Qualification’) have decided _without a division_ to throw open all their examinations to women. I am exceedingly surprised, for though I heard an application had been made, I thought there was little hope of success, and took no trouble about it. However, so it is, and I hope to have classes opened in the Extra-Mural School (and perhaps in connection with St. Andrews) next winter. Somebody has left St. Andrews (subject to a life interest) a legacy of £50,000 on condition of admitting women. So you see all round ‘Pigs is looking up.’

Mrs. Russel was here for a few days a fortnight ago, and is as nice as ever.”

This great advance gave a fresh impetus and point to the publication of _Medical Women_,[151] which was duly achieved a few months later. It called forth a great sheaf of congratulatory letters from those who remembered the old days.

Footnote 151:

_Medical Women_, by Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier. The book has long been out of print, but, as a storehouse of facts, it is largely drawn upon by all writers on the subject, including the author of the present volume.

“Of course,” wrote Dr. King Chambers, “future generations will think it necessary to season your arguments with the traditionary grain of salt; but the facts are so clearly and calmly stated that they will be accepted absolutely. As to the character of the movement itself, the future must give it.”

“I am glad I was always a steady, if humble, adherent to the side of justice before its cause was popular,” wrote Professor Charteris. “I hope that you will long and increasingly enjoy the position that you had such a hard fight to win. You got all the buffets for many a day.”

And Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell:

“I am sorry that we have lost you from London. We much need that combination of unselfish activity and wise combination of practical qualities which we find in no other of the leaders of the movement.”

“What a change,” says Dr. Heron Watson, “has come over the spirit of the Medical Corporation since the story of your efforts in the cause first appeared.”

And this—finally—is from a generous letter from the Revd. William Pechey:

“If Edith is entitled to the praise of having borne, as you say, ‘an excellent part’ in the movement you narrate, she would, I am sure, be the first to join me in saying that you alone can fairly say: ‘_Quorum maxima pars fui._’”

But the mention of Dr. Pechey’s name reminds one of a delightful letter she forwarded from her little friend Rukhmabai (now Dr. Rukhmabai) who, needless to say, was _not_ one of those who remembered the old days.

“Girgaum, “23rd June, 1886.

MY DEAR MISS PECHEY,

I herewith return ... one of your books (The Roman Singer), with many thanks. I looked it all over just enough to know the purport of the story, which I found contains nothing but mere _love_ matters.

I shall return the other book (Medical Women) in a few days. It is so very interesting to me that I don’t like to drop a single word of it while reading. It gives me a great comfort as I see the _truth_ won the victory at last, though you had to suffer so much even in a country like Europe. I would never have believed if some common person were to tell me, that the people there were so against to allow women to study medicine....

Yours affectionately, RUKHMABAI.”

S. J.-B. was interested too at this time in the development of a volume for the publication of which she had been responsible in the first instance,—that most useful gazetteer, _The Englishwoman’s Year Book_,—the success of which has unhappily never been comparable to its merits: and she continued to advise and help the first editor, her friend, Miss Louisa Hubbard.

In 1886 she was asked to deliver one of a series of Health Lectures in Edinburgh, and of course she consented gladly,—her special lecture being addressed to women only. The lectures were free, and the lecturers unpaid.

When arrangements were far advanced, she found that the Committee proposed to charge one shilling for admittance to her lecture, and she promptly rebelled. She wanted all her Dispensary patients and all their friends to come and hear what she had to say, and the charge seemed to her to do away with more than half the good of her lecture. It was represented to her that a charge was also to be made for the corresponding lecture to men only, but she did not consider the cases identical. In any case the men’s lecture was no affair of her’s.

Mrs. Trayner (afterwards Lady Trayner) was an important person on that committee, and she and Lord Trayner had a great respect and cordial regard for S. J.-B. They understood her, and they wanted other people to understand her too. They were most anxious that she should waive her objection to the shilling charge, partly and especially because she was coöperating in the matter of the Health Lectures with men doctors, and they—the Trayners—wanted her to show herself gracious and conciliatory.

S. J.-B.’s reply to Mrs. Trayner’s letter is characteristic of her attitude at that time:

“Pray thank Lord Trayner warmly for his kind interest in me and the medical women generally. I think, however, that he somewhat over-estimates the importance of what the men doctors may think one way or the other. You and he will remember that all that we have gained has been gained in the teeth of nearly all of them, and if they have failed to hinder me hitherto, they are certainly powerless to hurt me now.... I am willing enough to shake hands with them if they wish it, but you must remember that it is I and not they who have the old sores to forgive....

I am sure you will understand that I say this merely because I want you to understand that my position is probably one of the most independent in Edinburgh,—I want nothing from anybody and I fear nothing from anybody. I mean to do in this, and larger matters, what seems to me right, to the best of my lights, and I have long ago learned while doing so to leave consequences to take care of themselves.

With hearty thanks for your kindness, believe me,

Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.

Pray excuse this hasty line, written at the end of a long day’s work.”

If this seems written in an ungracious and reprehensible spirit, the reader must bear in mind the fire the writer had come through. And after all what is it but a somewhat pagan rendering of St. Paul’s “From henceforth let no man trouble me....”

In any case the Trayners were not of the kind to take offence. Their interest in S. J.-B. and her work remained unbroken. Lady Trayner visited the Dispensary more than once and took on as a regular pensioner a brave old patient with a disfigured face, who appealed to her sympathies more than most.

The lecture was free, and proved a great success.

“You will like to know,” writes S. J.-B. to Miss Irby, “that my lecture went off very well, the hall (which holds nearly 2000) was crammed to the doors and stairways, and I lectured from slight notes, much better, Ursula says, than if I had read a lecture.

I have already had 4 new patients in consequence.”

It now remained for women to avail themselves _de facto_ of their admission _de jure_ to the Royal Colleges. “I trust,” wrote S. J.-B. in a letter to the _Times_, announcing the fresh step gained, “I trust that classes will now within a few months be re-opened in Edinburgh. With a view to definite arrangements for the ensuing winter session, I shall be very glad to receive the names of any ladies desiring to study in Scotland.” A few days later she wrote to the secretary of the Extra-Mural School, who happened to be an old ally.

“Bruntsfield Lodge, March 17. [1886].

DEAR DR. MACADAM,

I have already had nearly a dozen letters from ladies wishing to study Medicine in Scotland, so it is clear that the demand is real and considerable.

Can you give me any printed statement about the classes, etc., in the Extra Mural School?... Of course I know that if separate classes were required much greater expense must be involved, but I sincerely hope that most of the lecturers may be willing to admit women in the ordinary way. If so, I believe that a considerable number would join the classes next winter. If you would kindly let me have a list of the Lecturers, and would tell me when the next meeting is to be, I might (if you thought it desirable) see some of them before the meeting. I wish very much that the matter could be favourably decided next month, as this would give us time to make arrangements, and get up a good class, etc.

Would it not be well for you before the meeting to get an official letter from the Registrar of the Irish College of Surgeons stating that women are admitted to all the ordinary classes (except Practical Anatomy) at Dublin?

To turn to another subject,—can you tell me the chemical nature of the fluid contained in “Fire-Extinguishing Grenades,” etc. Are they really reliable?

Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

It is clear from this that she had not the smallest intention nor wish to found a separate School of Medicine for Women; but her hopes as regarded the lecturers were doomed to disappointment. On the whole they showed themselves enlightened and helpful, but they declined to admit women to their ordinary classes.

They were quite willing—some of them—to lecture to women separately, but one could not expect first-rate men in rising practice to devote an hour or more of precious time daily without more adequate remuneration than the fees of the first handful of women students were likely to represent. There must, of course, be a sufficient guarantee to make the undertaking worth their while, and the students were assuredly not in a position to provide that guarantee; so S. J.-B. made herself responsible for it at once.

For the first year the women attended separate lectures at one of the men’s schools, but it soon became obvious that separate premises, in which students could study and dissect, and change their dress, and generally make themselves at home, were, if not absolutely necessary, at least highly desirable.

Now it happened that, in the days of the old struggle, in a moment perhaps when hope ran high, S. J.-B., Miss Louisa Stevenson and Miss Du Pre had bought the famous old premises in Surgeon Square, which had been a medical school for generations. Here Robert Knox had lectured to his students, and the place had thrilling and sinister associations with Burke and Hare. When all hope of education in Edinburgh seemed finally blighted, these premises had been let to various tenants, but S. J.-B. had never lost sight of the possibility that they might some day be used again for their original purpose.

So now the old place was repaired and cleaned and painted and heated,—under the personal supervision of S. J.-B. and one or two friends, at small cost as regards money, but with lavish expenditure of brains and good will.

It was necessary, too, that hospital instruction should be provided, and to this end, S. J.-B. approached the authorities at Leith.

“The very large number of students at the Edinburgh Infirmary,” she wrote to Dr. Struthers, “make it almost impossible that women should there get opportunities of study, and (as there is no other suitable hospital of sufficient size in Edinburgh) I am anxious to ascertain whether the Directors of the Leith Hospital would entertain the idea of admitting them to opportunities of clinical study in their wards.

If so, I should be glad to make any arrangement as to fees that may be desired by the Directors; or if they preferred it would at once guarantee fees to the amount of 200 guineas yearly.”

Her application was warmly supported by Mr. R. Somerville, and others of the Directors, and after a long series of letters and interviews, the negotiation was completed.

“Every night I am quite as tired as is safe,” she wrote to Miss Irby, who had begged for a postcard, “and yet every day I have to omit half a dozen things that cry out to be done. However I _do not mean_ to break down again, so I simply do what I can and leave the rest.”

Little by little the School became more of a corporate thing. A resident secretary was necessary, of course, so S. J.-B. hit on a likely person[152] and trained her. Caretakers (man and wife) were found to look after the premises. A library was provided, and, as soon as might be, anatomical and Materia Medica museums. No one who has not lived through the founding of a medical school can form the faintest idea how much it means. S. J.-B. had been over the ground before, and may be supposed to have realized what she was undertaking.

Footnote 152:

S. J.-B. never had a more loyal and devoted helper than the first secretary of the School, Miss Janet Black.

She had Dr. Balfour’s help from the first, and a tower of strength he proved: by degrees a committee was formed: but from first to last the responsibility rested to all intents and purposes on her shoulders.

The position, too, on which the whole thing rested was curious. The School was not recognized as such. Each lecturer was recognized individually. At any moment any lecturer in the Extra-Mural School was free to open a rival class and cut the ground from under S. J.- B.’s feet.

The new venture, moreover, had all the disadvantages inherent in a new creation. It had no senior students, none even, at first, who had gone through the wholesome discipline of the modern High School: it had no tradition. By the sheer necessities of the case, S. J.-B. was compelled to be senior student,—to be tradition.

For ten or more years the School did excellent work, but the instability of its foundation proved too great. Whether the “lion- hearted”[153] pioneer, with her extraordinary bent for arranging detail, could in any case have made a success of the venture, under such difficult conditions, when the heroic days of initiation were over, it is impossible to say. The reader will not need to be told— S. J.-B.’s bitterest opponent never denied—that she put into the venture infinitely more labour and sympathy and affection and brains than she need have done,—and there were those among the students who came near to appreciating these qualities as they deserved. But of course there were others—as at Mannheim of old—with whom a cheaper personality would better have served the turn.

Footnote 153:

The adjective is applied to her by Charles Reade in _The Woman Hater_.

For a year or two everyone was happy and contented, and then the crash of temperaments came. There is no need to tell the story in detail. Some of those concerned were young, and some were foolish, and there are some concerning whom one’s lips are sealed. The original difficulty was complicated by side issues that never could be fully threshed out. The actual story seems interminable, and sometimes insignificant enough, but the principle underlying it is of the real essence of tragedy. Enough to say that at the end of a year or two, S. J.-B. found herself confronted with a form of opposition which no one in authority would cheerfully have gone to meet,—a form of opposition peculiarly trying to one of her temperament. Supreme tact might have weathered the storm,—and it must always be remembered that, on many occasions in life, in this connection and in others,—she evidenced a tact that was all but supreme. In any case she failed here. Opposition classes were started in due course on a cheaper basis, classes in which the central controlling power was purely nominal. There was endless propaganda; some sort of organization was got together: everybody who had a grudge against S. J.-B. remembered it now; her faults, mistakes and deficiencies—particularly her want of enthusiasm for missions—came back relentlessly upon her head: and she found herself (as Thring has said of “every consistent worker on principle”), “put in the position of opposing what she had always worked for, and her opponents posing as the workers.” Professor Masson and Miss Louisa Stevenson, both of whom had considered the founding of a Scottish School at this moment premature, wrote to her in grim amusement at some of the names which now appeared in support of the cause.

Let it be conceded for all the concession is worth, that in a sense S. J.-B. brought the difficulty upon herself. Once again something was required of her which a smaller person could have given, but which she could not give. The tragic element lay in this that she never saw where she was at fault. She was conscious of an honest purpose and of unwearying unselfish endeavour. What more could one ask? So many people succeed who give much less than this! She even yielded on a good many points—when yielding was too late.

What strikes one most on looking back is the extraordinary loyalty with which most of the students rallied round her when the split came.

When one of the lecturers (who had striven, like so many others, to make “even a slight alteration” in her) congratulated her on the “brains” she had retained in the School, she responded characteristically:

“_And_ the heart.”

“And the heart,” he agreed.

Some of the lecturers were even finer. “The terms you name are quite satisfactory,” wrote Dr. Aitken when things were at quite their worst, and S. J.-B. could no longer guarantee an adequate emolument. “I would take your students without fee of any kind before I would see you beat, so you need not let the matter give you any concern.”

And Dr. (now Professor) A. J. Thomson, when he heard she was leaving Edinburgh, wrote:

“I have always felt, if I may dare to say so, that your part has been like that of a general who won a great battle and then rode away, leaving the achievement with the ungrateful. Happily you know how many of us are neither ungrateful nor ignorant.”

But finest of all was the effect on S. J.-B. herself. She fought on, of course,—that was in the nature of her,—and loyal supporters were many;[154] but, although the long struggle to keep the better School going,—to get it improved, endowed, affiliated to the University of St. Andrews,—absolutely wore her out, she never became embittered and she never really lost her buoyancy. When Queen Margaret College opened a medical side in 1890, one might have thought it was the last straw, especially as it meant the removal of eight of her students whose homes were in or near Glasgow, but in this case her loss meant the progress of the cause, and she rejoiced in it wholeheartedly. It was delightful to see the happy terms on which she and Miss Galloway worked in sympathy until and beyond the final closing of the Edinburgh School.

Footnote 154:

The Marquis of Bute and Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff (Under Secretary for Scotland) are among the best-known names in the company of those who did their best to help her.

So she always retained her gallant front. If she thought sometimes of “that weary School” she never spoke so: she always saw in it the ideal of what it was going to be. Success was always just round the corner so to speak, all but within reach; but success, in the form in which she looked for it, never came.

Success there was, of course, “not its semblance, but itself.” Honest work always means success. The brief life of that School was the seed-time of much fine work that would otherwise never have been done. Its students have acquitted themselves nobly in many parts of the world. And on the principle that “he who watereth shall himself be watered,” it did much for S. J.-B. It gave her a little band of juniors who in some measure understood her, who responded to her ideals, who were proud to assist her and to reckon themselves her disciples. The interest she took in them individually was amazing. No trouble was too great that would forward their interests in any way. As the years went on, she seemed to forget herself altogether in their successes. She lived anew in their lives. Her whole nature grew and mellowed, though it could not change. And one is glad to record that never again to the end of life did she suffer the weeks and months of loneliness that had darkened the early days of her professional career.