“A talk with Miss E. and Miss H. about the sacraments, and ‘preparation’. Miss Gruben instanced with horror,—‘In England a party the night before.’ I said, ‘The theatre, with all my heart.’ Exclamations. ‘If I could not take the Communion half an hour after leaving the theatre, I would never enter it.’ Then found myself in the disagreeable position of apparent Pharasaism. ‘Wish I were so good, etc!’ or hints like that. Yet surely, Octa? If there is a time when we cannot kneel for the Communion, that time should be blotted out. ‘Living to God’,—how that blends and binds all life!
Today dear Mrs. Teed. God bless her! Yes, surely,—now she would not be hard on ‘prayer for the dead’. Yet what a noble soul! Ah, if she had lived,—if I could have justified myself to her whom I so respected. But, as Dora says, she knows it all now! Perhaps her spirit sees and sympathises with mine that looks with such love to her footsteps gone before. In life she would have disapproved of some things,—now at least she will see motives. ‘I believe in the communion of saints.’...
Just been reading C. Brontë. Moved me almost to tears. What honour and blessing to have dried some of those tears,—filled some void in that heart. And yet doubtless ‘He has fixed it well’. At least she and I and a multitude that no man can number all form portions of the Hosts of the Lord.... And it is the work—not our pleasure. The scattering is part of the benefit.
Ah, the Land of the Leal! The banishment past,—the solitude,—the tears,—the struggle. In hoc signo. ‘The Lord shall wipe away all tears from off all faces’.”
At this time she was extraordinarily happy in her work.
“How can people paint a teacher’s life as always such a suffering one! My room now quite a little Paradise. Frl. von Palaus up about it again this morning.... Now only some ivy and a tin pot wanted!
My Schematism [?] very light. Certainly they take a generously liberal view of ‘earning my bread’. Well, at all events it shall be well earned, if not largely. I’m half afraid of myself now that I have the responsibility of 25 English pupils. I am really very anxious to get them on so well and so rapidly as to convince the world of the wisdom of having an English teacher!”
How thoroughly she succeeded in this aim may be gathered from the letter of one of her pupils written a few months later,—
“We now have an English mistress. Miss Blake, and she gives us so many things to do that I am already too fatigued to entertain me any longer with you: she is an inhabitant of your land, and, if all people are so diligent there, it is a wonder that you are not all philosophers.”
Her diary abounds with shrewd and genial criticisms of her fellow-teachers. Of one whom she rather disliked, she says:
“Miss D. has greatly laughed herself into my good books,—such a cheery simple merry laugh. I don’t think anything very bad could hide under such a laugh at her age.”
And again,—
“That good Frl. von Palaus! Well might I today liken her to a sunbeam! How she lights up the very house,—how bright burns her lamp,—yet how simply!”
No wonder her letters were a joy to the Mother watching at home.
“Your letter has cheered me and done me good,” she writes on Christmas day, “taking away the clouds in a great measure, that would hang over a day that owed so much of its brightness to your dear presence; but truly, as you say, we have a far truer unity and a sympathy which I fear might never have come but through trial and separation.”
Life was not all spent on the mountain heights, of course. Even at this time she had her ups and downs like other people. Here is one of the “downs”:
“Who is sufficient for these things? seems my whole cry today. I don’t know why especially, but I seem so oppressed with a sense of the greatness, the weight of my work,—and of my own miserable insufficiency for it. Oh, so weak and stupid and unfit! And it isn’t humility,—it’s just truth.
I’m horribly showy,—always (voluntarily or not) deceiving people into a belief into talents I haven’t. Then I’ve will enough and would work, but no health or strength for it. That’s not your doing, S. J-B. ‘Hath not the Potter—?’
Besides, you’ll never be called upon to do what you can’t. God will give you power or send another in your stead.... And ‘who is sufficient?’ ‘My Grace is sufficient’.
Yet I am thankful, too, for even this fit of despair or at least downheartedness,—for I was fearing horribly, lest, my whole heart being bent on one hope and plan, I might be too far identifying my success with it, lest I might be seeking to win something for myself,—not simply to see God’s will done by me or without me. And from the bottom of my heart did go up, ‘Lord, put me aside utterly if need be!—and here, perhaps, the answer.’”answer.’”
She did not always take her reactions so seriously:
“Cold. Therefore rather cross and grumbling. Prowling about the corridors with shoulders nearly up to my ears, mind do. And I fool and sybarite enough to conjure up pictures of a certain dainty little room with blazing fire.... ‘Shame on ye, Gallants, wha ride not readily!’... Well, well, indeed it was not really a grumble,—only a John Bull growl. You don’t think I really give in an inch for such nonsense?
No. Well, there, that’ll do.
As well to grumble to my book as to poor small folk downstairs, who want bracing not enervating.
Granted. But why either?
Oh, now you’re infringing the liberty of the press! I may write anything that wells up.
There, there!—pax.”
This is one of the many dialogues between “The Infantine” and “The Estimable,” as she called them. Greatly did her Mother appreciate the titles.
A few weeks later, after some words of yearning for a “comprehending ear,” a “sympathetic hand,” she breaks off abruptly with,—“Heigh ho! Shut up Grumbles! ‘a cussin’ and a swearin’ like that,’ as long coz would say.”
Greater troubles were in store than those constituted by cold dark mornings. No mention is made in the prospectus given above of holidays, and Mrs. Jex-Blake in her letters complains much of the “No holiday” system. Apparently the boarders only went home for a few days at a time, and for months together S. J.-B. does not seem to have slept away from the Institut for a single night. It was no wonder if, under these conditions, teachers and pupils “got on each other’s nerves,” and among Frl. von Palaus’ many qualifications was not that of being a strict disciplinarian. When the novelty wore off, the girls, after the fashion of their kind, began to try how far they could go with the English governess. As may be imagined from her previous history, S. J.-B., though an admirable teacher, did not show herself particularly strong in the matter of keeping order. The pupils found out their power of “tormenting” her, and the delicacy of their feeling may be gauged by the fact that on one occasion they gaily charged her with having “weeped in church” (“False, by the bye, in fact,” she says in her diary). With delightful naïveté they summed up the things she could not do. She could not sing, nor play, nor dance, nor paint, nor embroider?—“What can you do, Miss Blake?”
Of course she would have thought it unworthy of her to mention the things she had done and could do. Moreover, for reasons given above, she was spending a minimum of money, and vulgar schoolgirls drew their own conclusions. She sometimes admits with remorse that she was hasty and unjust in little things,[34] and, although there is no indication that she ever fell into the tempests of passion that characterized her girlhood, she owns that she often assumed a stony indifference, which, of course, though she did not know it, was a great deal worse. All the time (so her diary shows) she was almost agonizing over these children, longing really to get into touch and fire them with her own zeal; she did not scruple to talk to them seriously and individually about the great issues of life; but when the magnetic influence of the interview was over, they felt a certain inconsistency in her, a hastiness, a failure to conform to conventional standards of right and wrong, a want of equity, or at least of equableness, of which she herself was almost unaware. “But oh, where is the special flaw?” she cries in her diary. “Lord help me! ‘Thou wilt not pity us the less’—that fault of my own forms my cross.”
In any case her pupils felt the flaw. Her conscientiousness, her zeal, her fine uprightness were more or less lost on them, or so it seemed. A cheaper form of goodness would have appealed to them more.
She never spoke of her home life and circumstances, and probably even Frl. von Palaus had very little idea that the English governess was a woman of family and position.
“Oh, how weary I am after those hours of struggle internal and external!” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “Almost like being tied to a stake,—so suffering, so helpless. And this I?—who used to fancy I had power to rule! Two months more will see me well nigh home I trust. Some faint foreshadowing of ‘Then are they glad because they are at rest.’ The thoughts of my green nest, and of the ruddy firelight, and the hymns at Mother’s knee very frequent in these days of struggle.”
She poured out the story of her failure to her Mother, and delightful were the letters she got in reply:
“(Miss v. Palaus) will miss my darling and her unselfish love terribly when she leaves.... Without any great vanity you must know that your hearty ready help must be most refreshing to her, and your wide-awake state must have a great influence over the Girls.”
“I cannot believe that your work has been done as indifferently as you think. I believe you have always done what you could, and fought hard against feelings and every form of indolence or selfishness. Surely you could somehow raise some response to fun; only perhaps a good deal arises from your being English and they not understanding.”
In spite of all, however, the trouble went deep, and she chronicles sadly in her diary that “neither moon nor stars for many days appeared.” Oddly enough, she never seems to have entertained the idea of simply giving in her resignation and going home. She entirely meant to serve her time,—nay more,—to hold the position until some suitable person was found to carry on her work. Certainly it was not the acquisition of the language that served as an inducement to remain, for, throughout her stay, she learned almost incredibly little. The whole of her very limited energy was thrown into her teaching.
“The hearty praise pouring in for the girls’ progress,progress, ought to comfort me there,” she says. “I suppose they almost certainly have got on more rapidly than with 9 teachers out of 10.”
One is glad to learn that months before she left Mannheim, the tide of popularity turned; and, although even she attributed the change in great part to the fact of her having worn a “ravissant” gown at the School Carnival Ball (a gown which she had worn as a bridesmaid in England) she was glad to respond by expanding good spirits to the diminished pressure. So the pretty frock served its turn. “There’s no doubt about it that opinion altogether has veered round widely about me. I think I am rather popular now,—I certainly was thoroughly the contrary.”
She was, until the later years of her life, wanting in sympathy with the more or less innocent and pardonable vanities of youth, and yet during this period she did sometimes cry out for a more vivid life,—or rather for days and hours of greater vividness to break the monotony of the working life she had deliberately chosen. It was one of her ambitions to be duly presented to Queen Victoria, for whom throughout life she had a great admiration, but the ambition was never realized.
“Darling,” writes her Mother, in answer to a very human cry, “your young bright days are nobly spent for the Lord. Shall we offer Him that which costs us nothing?... There always has been (though probably not necessarily) so much that is false, impure and hollow connected with most of what are termed amusements that you would soon loathe them, and feel work and even discipline more satisfying.” But never for one moment from her twentieth year onwards did S. J.-B. ask for amusement and vividness in place of work and discipline.
She might have found recreation and stimulus in the music of Germany, but her chief limitation was on the side of Art. Music did not appeal to her, and, although one of her greatest gifts was the possession of a beautiful speaking voice, with a perfect natural production, she could not sing and had no ear for music at all. She argues with herself on the subject,—“Surely singing, for instance, is a wholesome and good amusement. Surely it is right that some should contribute it for others? Yet, perhaps, mere amusement, even for others, is not a life-work for anyone? At least unless as a duty. So few sing, as Fra Bartolomeo painted, ‘on their knees’.”
This is estimable enough so far as it goes, but artistic perception is wanting, and throughout life she never got much farther in this direction, though she always loved to hear a simple congenial song sung by one she loved. “Do you care for the ‘unlearned praise’?” she used to say. When she quoted, as she sometimes did, “’Tis we musicians who know,”—it was not of music she was thinking.
All through this period her main preoccupation was with religion. She was reading, among other things, the In Memoriam and Robertson’s Sermons, and she continued to read them till the end of her life. Her volumes of Robertson are falling to pieces with sheer honest careful lifelong use, and many of the sermons are marked with a date and with initials to remind her of the times when she shared her treasure with some special friend. Assuredly, in the words of her loved quotation, Robertson “found her.” Living, as she was at this time however, mainly among Roman Catholics, she felt—as so many have felt—a real desire to share their communion.
“I mean to study Romanism as thoroughly as I can,” she says. “Hitherto I have not by any means found, as C. Brontë, my repugnance to Roman Catholicism increased by close view.”
She was anxious to get a proper breviary or missal, and apparently finding this difficult in Mannheim, she wrote to her Mother to send her one. That wonderful old lady! She can’t have enjoyed the commission, but she set about the fulfilment of it most loyally. And, oddly enough, she too met with many difficulties. She declined to be put off with The Garden of the Soul, and finally she writes:
“I despair of getting a satisfactory breviary, unless you can send me definite orders for Treacher to procure one. Marvellous rubbish at the only R.C. shop. They were very anxious to fetch the R.C. priest!—to help me,—‘were sure he was within.’ Fancy if Daddy had come by, with the carriage at the door and I inside in deep conversation with said Priest!...”
No, there never was such a Mother! Her openness of mind shows itself in a hundred extracts. “I do not fairly know Thomas à Kempis,” she says. “The passage you quoted was very grand and beautiful.” “I wonder if you will care for my extract from Pusey in the ‘Times’. I always think there is such a chastened, disciplined spirit in what he writes,—no pepper, nor vinegar.” “If I were obliged to have a great deal of company, I should, I doubt not, feel ‘Lent’ a grand repose and comfort; as it is, I am disposed to kick at it as artificial.”
And she is no longer afraid to express her loving appreciation.
“I don’t call you so much a ‘sweet-tempered’ as an ‘excellent-natured’ girl,—most unselfish, energetic, and at all times ready in the behalf of others. A regular ‘sweet temper’ is rarely found with very strong deep feelings.... I don’t think there ever was such true love as your’s—unless it be her’s under disguise. You would not now be able to stand alone as you do had circumstances not separated you. God has two great works,—one for her, one for you.”
“I am quite sure, by pouring out your heart to me, you help me on as well as yourself. You bring before me such strengthening texts and poetry, and our hearts get so very closely knit. It may seem selfish to say so, but your sorrows have greatly enhanced my joys by bringing us close, and, as it were, entwining us inseparably.”
In a fine sermon on Old and Young, the late Bishop of Oxford dwells on the “tragedy going on in the life of many a home, ... as father and son or mother and daughter grow conscious, sometimes with silent pain, and sometimes with scarcely veiled resentment, of an ever-widening severance, a perpetual and almost irrevocable ebbing of sympathy and trust.” If any further proof were needed than has already been given of the wholeheartedness with which this mother and daughter resisted that tendency to severance and realized the sympathy and trust, it may be found in the correspondence that follows:
My own Darling Mother,—I’m right sorry you didn’t get your baby’s first morning greeting,—I went out on purpose to post the letter on Friday that you might. It’s very tiresome too that the other little messenger didn’t reach you,—however Mother knows it was sent, and it’s useless to risk sending more the same way; you shall get it in duplicate when I come home,—whenever that is.
Sometimes I think I ought to stay here till I have mastered my difficulties and learned to rule,—then again I see that years and years of my life will be but a learning of that lesson, and the great thing is to see how to dispose of them most wisely, not in obstinacy or in self-consenting even on a point like that. Besides month after month of unbroken work does come to tell on one, specially if one starts not over strong; and I feel myself looking forward with significant expectation to the coming rest (and still more, refreshment time) again,—to say nothing of seeing faces and hearing voices that I fancy may too not be sorry to see and hear mine again. I am watching the now really lengthening days almost like a schoolchild,—indeed I am tremendously much of a child yet, Mother,—and thinking how the days and weeks roll on and bring the homecoming nearer. Even if I returned here, I must have a holiday and not a very short one,—for I have got a good deal used one way or another,—though now I am again delightfully cheery and strong,—and able to work twice as well among the children when a laughing word comes instead of a weary one; and they feel it too, I am sure.
I shall be very curious to read Colenso’s book,—will you send me its name, please? It is so very easy a way to get up a laugh (which somebody calls the Devil’s keenest sword) against opinions or people you don’t agree with, by such a jest as that Colenso wants to turn ‘the Bible into Rule of Three sums’,—so much more easy than justifiable or Christian. It’s just a word which, said of a great Mathematician, is sure to ‘take’ whether there is any or no sense in it. People like to laugh and repeat what sounds sharp, and prove their own superiority (?) to such men as they can’t hope to get within 100 miles of in attainments.
Besides in a certain non-sneering sense, it may really be true without inferring any blame. (I wonder if you like me to discuss the question or not? If not, just tear up the next page or two unread, that’s all.)
The Rule of Three (as it is most absurdly called) is perhaps the purest form of development of the principle of Cause and Effect,—the principle that rules the world and lies at the root of all science and all logic. You see an effect,—it must have a corresponding cause. You are aware of a cause,—you imply with certainty answering effect. ‘To look through Nature up to Nature’s God’—is strictly (if you choose so to call it) a Rule of Three sum. Again,—‘These are Thy works, Parent of Good,—Thyself how wondrous then!’—a pure syllogism,—or, if you please, Rule of Three sum—thus:
| I. | The author must be greater than his works. |
| II. | God’s works are great beyond our conception. |
| III. | How infinite then their Maker! |
Or, more beautiful and more sacred than all,—‘He that spared not His own Son ... how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?’
The form of reasoning that St. Paul did not disdain to use need hardly be a reproach to Colenso.
God Himself does give us minds and does bid us use them,—He is not afraid of His truth standing in the sunlight, though some of His people are. Robertson draws out very beautifully how the Christ never sought blind credence,—superstitious belief even in His words because they were His. He never said ‘I say so,—there’s an end,’ (as so many of His followers like to put in His mouth). ‘If I say the Truth, why do ye not believe me?’—again, more exquisite still in its loving humility,—‘Though ye believe not me, believe the works’,—‘Search the Scriptures’ etc. etc.,—always praying them to test Him by His works, by the voice of their own conscience, by the testimony of their sacred books,—continually protesting against the idea of His own assumption of sovereign power, ‘I know nothing of Myself.’ But here I’m getting on another subject, and I’ll stop.
But I always get greatly interested in a discussion about the Bible,—people seem to me often so hopelessly superstitious and illogical about it, and so to miss its truest, most blessed meaning.
It always seems to me that the question divides itself into two perfectly distinct parts,—regarding, so to speak, the spiritual and temporal part of the Bible. The first is entirely without the province of the intellect or the reason,—‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, ... but God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit.’ As Colani says (I think, indeed, it was him I quoted before) it is not a question of logic or of evidence whether we believe ‘the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God Thou wilt not despise!’,—the certainty of its truth is self-evident to us; we are absolutely sure the moment we hear the words that the All-Good rejoices in repentance and not in blood. It is the word of God from without speaking to the Spirit of God within us ‘whose temples we are.’ In Coleridge’s forcible words, ‘it finds us’,—it pierces through ear and brain irresistibly to the spirit of every man. Yes, every man; there is not one in the world however debased who could doubt whether God preferred a broken heart or a costly gift. He may not think about it, he may let the words pass by him, but, receiving them at all into his mind, he cannot doubt....
Feel,—suffer, and words like those bring their own proof; let them once enter and you need not ask whether their truth is received or not. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ We know it is so; no one in the world could really doubt for one second whether holiness or impurity brings the man to God,—to see Him....
In all this the whole mass of ‘Evidence’ goes for absolutely nothing. If the Bible had never been heard of to this moment, and I picked it off a dunghill, those words and truths would just as irresistibly transfix and ‘find’ me as a two-edged sword.
But since, as Pulsford says, ‘Most people get their faith through their heart, not through their head,’—there are thousands of God’s children who, seeing and feeling the infinite beauty and pricelessness of these words and truths,—but not seeing fully their infinite omnipotence, their absolute impregnability,—fancy that to preserve from the slightest danger what is to them so infinitely precious, it is necessary to claim for the whole casket the same authority and value that the jewel claims for itself: and then, because this claim does not and cannot maintain itself, they rush to arms for it and brand as ‘rejectors of the Bible’ some who, like your child, find in its words the very deepest blessings of existence....
I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion worth anything, but as far as I can judge, it seems to me the result of open fair criticism rather establishes than disturbs the veracity of all Jewish history as given in the Bible since the time of Moses, while it does not seem to me possible satisfactorily to defend the authenticity of the account of the Creation and probably the first few centuries,—both from the certainties of Geology and probabilities of history, and also from the internal evidence.
But what is the leading point to me is the folly of trying to arrest honest investigation about anything,—and the especial mistake of fancying that any result arrived at could touch the real standing and position of the Bible. For myself, I can say in all sincerity that if not one fraction only but the whole biblical history were proved to be utterly unreliable and mistaken, it would not make the difference of a straw’s weight either to my life or my faith,—it is not as a rival of Herodotus that I have valued the Bible,—the destruction of the historical credit of the one would matter just as much to me as that of the other. We might lose some grand illustrations of God’s love and care, but the truths would remain, and the history of any century, of any land, of any man, leaves Him not ‘without a witness’....
Well, Mother, it has indeed been more than a page or two,—if it pains or wearies you do but burn it; but I am glad from the bottom of my heart to tell you honestly what and why I believe on a subject where I fear Mother is a little afraid of me;—to put at least calmly and clearly before you other thoughts and words than those you hear oftenest,—not that you may accept, but that you may consider them. For you as for me, Mother, God ‘shall lead us into all truth’.
Sunday. You asked me about Miss v. Palaus. She isn’t ill now, but I think she suffers altogether from this terrible ‘no holiday’ system. Think what it is to go on for 26 years!—with only a week’s break at a time, and that perhaps once a year.
Dear, I broke off abruptly, it occurring to me to apply the principle of how bad it was to go on without change and how one was bound to get all one could; also that it was a bright day and that I was no use where I was, so had better go to Heidelberg....
The sermon was about sorrow and bereavement, commonplace enough and disagreeable sometimes, but chiming in in bits with some thoughts of mine. For one thing he said it was a duty to rouse oneself after a time and go back to one’s daily work. Now, Mother, you know better than anyone how I have strained every sinew to take up my tool again and work on, from the very first months even. But there is a certain state of things which I can’t honestly conceal from myself which makes the struggle in some ways a very terrible one.
I am sure ‘what is is best’, and I don’t say one word in the form even of sorrow, only of perplexity. But, Mother, I haven’t the least the mind I had,—I have waited and waited to see if they would not waken but now for nearly 18 months my mental powers seem struck with stupor. It’s no use urging them,—they don’t answer the call. The love and power of mental work seem to have faded away. I just jog on from day to day with sense enough for daily life perhaps,—but I don’t seem to get any nearer any return of intellects. I won’t say it would have been better—because if it would, it would have been so—but I don’t doubt if I had had a crushing physical illness last Xmas, the agony would have exhausted itself and I probably risen from a brain fever as strong as ever,—but no physical relief coming in this form, the whole weight seems to have fallen on my brain and paralyzed it. My whole mind sometimes seems a blank,—the children ask me simple questions and I know nothing. Sometimes it’s hard work to crush back the tears when it is so.
You know those terrible (they did frighten me horribly) kinds of delusions that showed me a white dog or a wheelbarrow just when I was going to pull up when driving you.
Well, Mother, it’s no use to go on,—no use even to say ‘What am I to do?’ One feels sure in truth that God ‘will find a way’ and show it to me....
But the time goes on and on, very many months already, and yet no streak of light comes from any quarter. One does not see the faintest sign of change, and yet one cannot see how things are permanently possible as they are.
You don’t think it is any want of will or effort in me, Mother? Surely God ‘reaps not where He has not strawed’.
Oh, Mother, Mother, what it will be to rest the tired stupid old head on your bosom again.
80 lessons a week is too much I’m afraid for Ruth, but I can’t pretend to look after her when I’m in Germany,—and perhaps nobody gets on much the worse for that fact. It’s a very forcible rebuke to one’s vanity to find how little anybody is missed from anywhere, (except in their Mother’s hearts, darling) and one or two others perhaps. Yet that’s a hasty way to speak. I believe I do have a great deal of love from more people than I deserve....
Please tell me by what post this arrives.”
An able letter surely, for one whose “intellects” were worn out. Of course she fails to realize how different her whole outlook on life would have been if she had found the Bible for the first time accidentally in mature life, “on a dunghill” or elsewhere. The Mother’s reply is surely at least as able:
My own Darling,
Your letter did not reach me till first post this morning. I quite believe Truth will in itself bear coming to the light, without suffering. But I do fear there are many minds, heads and hearts without one sentence of heavenly truth upon which to fall back for comfort, which may be irreparably injured by the doubt and contemptcontempt thrown upon historical parts; and thence deduce, ‘All is false, and cannot do me good or help me in any way.’ I think I must send you the last ‘Cornhill’ come in this afternoon. I imagine the critique in it is from a man who would favour free enquiry,—a son of Dr. Arnold’s,—Matthew Arnold. He says, ‘I censure Colenso’s book because, while it impresses strongly on the reader that the Pentateuch is not to be read as an authentic narrative; it so entirely fails to make him feel that it is a narrative full of divine instruction in morals and religion, etc., etc.’ I ought to have stated that all this comes in in a critique upon Stanley’s ‘Lectures on the Jews’, which Arnold greatly admires. Now that February is at hand, I find that the January! Macmillan has an actual critique upon Colenso. Shall I send it to you? I have not read it. I asked Hetty if she had. She considers it severe on Colenso. I think I shall send it.
Your long dissertation did not annoy or weary me at all, indeed it rejoiced mother’s heart. You seem to have all you want to live and die upon. What can you need more? Certainly I have individually great comfort and enjoyment from seeing Christ as my Substitute in a manner that I apprehend you do not. If it be, as I suppose, needful, I am sure your loving Father will give it you in His good time. As to your mental powers, it is very strange. We can only wait patiently and say, ‘It is the Lord. Let Him do what seemeth Him right’. I don’t suppose the important precious discipline you are going through could have been produced in time of full mental vigor. That will assuredly return if for your real good. Meanwhile you may well trust Him who has done such great things for you. I long as much as you to have you resting on my bosom. Rest you must have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.... Nothing, as you say, invalidates the grand truths responded to from within. At all times the Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.
A fortnight later she writes:
“Only fancy, Daddy has been reading Colenso’s book!”
“Rest you must have: refreshment of spirit I pray you may have.”
So wrote Mrs. Jex-Blake in the end of January; but even the physical rest was destined to be long delayed. As explained in the previous chapter, S. J.-B. did not at all draw to the idea of deserting her post before a suitable person arrived to supply it, and that suitable person was not easy to find. So the months went by, and it was not till April was well advanced that all arrangements were made for her departure within a fortnight. She was wild with delight at the prospect of getting home, but the fates were unkind. On May 3rd she writes in her diary:
“Well, I do feel most uncommonly seedy,—no doubt about that,—having just waded through my packing somehow, and ‘bitterly thought of the morrow’, and how many leagues and hours lie between me and a snug bed, clean sheets and beef tea. But, somehow or other I do mean to push through and trust my luck for falling as usual on my feet, catlike. Specially anxious, by the bye, not to be spied out here or it’ll all go down to the baths”—she had been bathing in the Rhine before breakfast—“as I daresay this heavy cold may, which reduces me to, or below, the level of the inferior animals.
Well, three days hence! Who can’t hold out that time?”
She certainly did her best to “hold out,” dragged herself out of bed, and went downstairs looking like “une déterrée,” so Frl. v. Palaus said. She refused to see the school doctor, believing that he would prevent her going home, and also that he would insist upon her keeping her window shut. For some reason unknown Frl. v. Palaus resolutely declined to have an English doctor sent for, and so things went on for a day or two till the patient agreed that the German doctor should be allowed to say whether her throat was “of importance.” Whether he was allowed adequate means of arriving at a diagnosis we have no means of knowing. In any case his answer was in the negative. Two days later the patient was obviously suffering from a sharp and typical attack of scarlet fever.
It really was a blow, poor child! She was so longing for her Mother, “My year’s work just done so painfully,—and now my cruse snatched from my lips. It is hard, hard! I didn’t one moment doubt it was right,—only very hard.” Then like an audible voice came the reminder of the inner light, and all pain went.
It does not necessarily follow that she proved a very easy patient, though she tried hard to be reasonable, and even to keep her window shut at night, which was quite unreasonable. The whole situation was sufficiently trying for Frl. v. Palaus; and S. J.-B., although she and her nurse became attached to each other, got little of the petting which throughout life she so greatly valued when just the right person bestowed it. Her Mother’s letters as usual were an infinite comfort, and her Father was with difficulty prevented from sending out a London physician to look after her, and, in due time, bring her home.
She made a good recovery, and was allowed to start for England on the 27th, when an English lady was engaged to accompany her. “Very like getting out of purgatory into heaven,” she says. “The dear old folks!”
Her Father was nervous about infection, and, fortunately for him, a trifling driving accident some four or five days after her return forced her to consult “Sam Scott.” “He couldn’t swear me free of fever, but said, ‘If you meet my children on the cliff, you may kiss them.’”
So S. J.-B. settled down once more to the old life at home, not without occasional “cataracts and breaks,” for her Father did not advance with the times, and hers was not the only hasty temper in the family. But she never doubted that a definite work was in store for her somewhere.
Her diary is sometimes amusing reading. To an acquaintance who—after visiting at Sussex Square and hearing the intimate fireside names—wrote to her as “My dear Jack,” she replies,
“Dear Miss D.,
Firstly I don’t like being called names, and secondly I have been overwhelmingly busy,—which two reasons must excuse my not having earlier sent you the address.”
“I agree with Macdonald,” is her connotation. “The only argument some people understand is being knocked down, and it’s cruel to withhold it from them.
And a very mild knocking down this time.”
“July 8th. Annette’s Sunday School. ‘The outward and visible sign in baptism?’
‘Please, ma’am, the baby, ma’am.’”
That her lamp was not burning dim one gathers from the letter that follows. It relates to the young invalid college friend whom she had wished to take with her to Germany:
Dear Lucy,
Though I know you will have heard before this of dear L.’s going home to her rest, I think you will like to have a few lines from me, as I believe E. was not able to write to you herself.
You heard probably of her breaking a blood vessel last month soon after her return to London, and it was very soon after that that I saw her for the last time alive. She was very gentle and quiet then, and I have since thought that she more entirely realised how near the end was than I and others did,—for there was no immediate danger then as far as anyone could know. When I told her again how much a duty I thought it for her to take the utmost care of her life for His service Who gave it, and added ‘Not that I want you or anyone to fear death,—that is the last thought one should have of the Home-going’,—she said,—‘Oh, yes,—I never did, and I never understood why people do.’ I told her Mother of this afterwards, and it is a very pleasant memory, among others.
Well, it was on Thursday, November 3rd. that this terrible spasmodic asthma came on, and I am afraid the struggle was sore for just the week,—but there was mercy in that too, for it made her Mother glad to see her at rest after it. Just a week later she died, very peacefully,—passing in sleep into the rest that remaineth. I heard of it on Thursday and went up to London directly, and I never was more heartily glad of having done anything in my life, for both Mrs. B. and E. seemed so glad to see me, and you can hardly believe the peaceful happy few hours we had together,—indeed there came to me (and I think to them too in some degree) such an intense realization of what the joy and light was into which she had entered, that no room seemed left for any pain even for oneself. I did love L. very much,—more perhaps than any of you knew,—but when I stood looking down on that calm pale face, the only words that would come into my mind were,—‘He was not, for God took him’. It seemed quite impossible even for a moment to identify her with that chill silence,—one felt she was already in the everlasting arms. Dear child! She left altogether a very happy memory,—of a bright clear life, and a calm peaceful death. We ‘thank God for this our dear sister departed....’
The funeral is to be next Wednesday,—I know that you will not be absent in spirit, though you cannot be there in presence as I hope to be. Mr. Plumptre will read the service at Kensal Green.
I do not know if I helped dear L. in her life. I know that she has helped me in her death almost beyond my conception. I ‘never feared’ death, and I always felt theoretically how it was the ‘going home’ and that only, but I never felt it with the practical intensity of this week. I never entered before into half its beauty and its holiness,—I feel almost as if I could never associate sadness with the idea again. Let it come in what form it may,—‘God giveth us the Victory’.
Just before she died, L. finished a story at which she had been working to compete for some magazine prize,—if it does not win this, we hope to get it published separately, as a memorial that will be beloved of many,—and indeed I hope it may come out in this form. I have offered to undertake the whole business. It is very pleasant to me that she has left this,—is it not to you?
Goodbye, dear Lucy,—my letter is already enormous, but I don’t fear your criticisms.
The monotony of the life that followed was broken by one or two visits to Paris and one to Germany, and she had a great scheme of going to America to study the education of girls there. Here again, of course, she was met by the strong opposition of her Father, and again she was forced to put forward all the good and attractive points in her plan while herself profoundly convinced of its vagueness and of her own physical inadequacy. She saw a good deal at this time of Mrs. Ballantyne (afterwards Lady Jenkinson) whom she met first in Edinburgh at the house of her sister, Mrs. Burn Murdoch. This was the beginning of another lifelong friendship, most refreshing to both,—a friendship characterized almost equally by playful camaraderie and jesting, and by many long talks about the things that lie deep.
“She is just good and true and ‘clear’,” S. J.-B. had written in her diary some months before. She records how they went together to an evening Holy Communion, what they felt and said,—and goes on without a break:
“Then, again she so delicious about my bonnet (not calculated
The first time. I saw you in it, nearly disliked you for it—only it was past that.
Not your taste?—Then you oughtn’t to wear what isn’t,—nor to get 14s. 9d. bonnets!
Poke into omnibuses?—Poke away, but wear proper bonnets.
Tottenham Court Road?—No business to go there for bonnets.
No money?—Then you must manage very badly! [Badly!—poor generous child,—counting every halfpenny that she might have the more to give away!]
Your sister?—No, I have nothing to do with her, but I have with you. Buy proper bonnets,—then get them altered—
Whereon I vowed that if she didn’t come to London and choose one, I’d buy the ugliest in Tottenham Court Road.
My compliments to Mrs. Heath, and she oughtn’t to compromise her taste by letting you buy such bonnets, etc., etc.
So very very refreshingly, and with such bright arch eyes.”
It was certainly no lack of appreciation in the ordinary relationships of life that urged S. J.-B. to find her vocation. There are many indications of her popularity at this time among cousins and friends.