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.