“Dearest Sophy,” writes the mistress of Honing Hall,—“It will be delightful to see you here. How often have I said to myself lately (having no one else to address my remarks to,—your Uncle being entirely taken up with his harvest, and more bothered than ever by it). ‘I do wish Sophy would offer her company for a few days.’
So, well pleased was I to see your handwriting this morning. I can meet you anywhere within reasonable distance. On Thursdays I have only your old friend, Little Grey, and on Tuesday, 30th., some of the Catfield people are coming over. Should you be here then, it would be an additional pleasure to all.”
And here is a characteristic note:
“Dear Miss Blake,
... Pray bring back from America a few more such good stories as you told me yesterday. I say this not ‘hoping I should see your face no more’.
On November 11th S. J.-B. received a letter that pleased her much from the Revd. T. D. C. Morse, rector of Stretford, Manchester:
“Madam,
I have had some correspondence with Professor Plumptre of Queen’s College about establishing a Ladies’ College in this locality, and he has referred me to you as likely to help me in this good work. Notwithstanding the fact that the movement for the improvement of female education has now been for some time set on foot, this populous neighbourhood is still very destitute in this respect. I have two girls, 12 and 13 years of age, and after making enquiries in very competent quarters, I have been told that there is only one Ladies’ School ‘worth a farthing’ in or near Manchester, and that is the Ladies’ College on the north side of the city at Higher Broughton. We are living on the south side and are surrounded by a large number of wealthy people who must necessarily miss such educational facilities. I wish therefore to try whether a good Ladies’ College can be founded on this side of Manchester, and I would be glad to know whether you could introduce me to a lady qualified to act as Principal of such an Institution. Mr. Plumptre was not quite sure whether you might be disposed to undertake such a work yourself or not, but, if you were so, I feel sure from what he has told me that the matter could not be in better hands.... You will understand, of course, that the matter at present is only in the phase of a project.”
“Plum, I owe thee one!” is S. J.-B.’s irreverent comment,—“good old Plum!”
“Such a real ‘call’ it sounds—and what a field to learn in!... Now America seems put in the background with a vengeance.”
She plunged at once into plans and arrangements, timetables, lists of tutors, etc., and on November 17th she writes in her diary:
“On Tuesday and today received letters from Mr. Morse, telling me of the Bishop’s support, and thus answering my question ... asking me for ‘any suggestions’. I feel little more is to be done without an interview, but write somewhat on essential heads ‘with great diffidence’:
I am sure that no one can give their really best work to any scheme which does not stand on foundation principles with which they are in sympathy, and, bearing in mind the proposition you hinted at in your first letter, I am bound both for your sake and for my own to ascertain as far as possible how far the harmony of our views would allow me to be a really efficient worker in your cause. I have a great belief in the superiority of rule by Law over that of individual will, and should as Director of any such College be very anxious to have as little as possible left to my own choice and judgment; but, having once been able to acquiesce in the spirit of established regulations, would deem it essential to have absolute authority to see them carried out alike by teachers and pupils. I am sure that to have such questions ill-defined at first is one of the most fruitful sources of after disturbance and failure in a college....
I believe that really good women teachers are more able to measure the power of a girl’s mind, and force her to do a certain amount of good work than men, who are in my experience very apt to let young pupils slip between their fingers, as it were.
At the same time, after a thorough groundwork has been laid, I think first-rate lecturers (almost useless till then) become quite invaluable.
Meaning—I want an interview.
“Dec. 1st. 1864. Reached Manchester yesterday. Staying now with the Morses.
Capital man he,—clear, energetic and practical; a little ‘trammelled’ by clerical bonds, but in the main wide and satisfactory.
Spite of the double assurance of Minnie and Ruth that I need not talk of my Unitarianism,—I could not be quite silent, and so tonight, naturally enough, and I think truthfully, gave in my half-declaration.
Mr. Morse said (in answer to my question whether we might not be ‘too episcopal’) that, without wishing to exclude any, he wished to have the College decidedly of Church origin, and should be sorry to have other than Church main workers.
I said, ‘Then perhaps you had better not have me.’
‘But do you not belong to the Church?’
‘Well, I was baptized and confirmed in it.’
‘But you go there rather than Chapel?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I go there pretty often. I go where helps me most.’
‘Where else?’
‘Oh, mainly Unitarian’, adding ‘I have not, however, any intention of joining the Unitarians, but they have helped me’, and, in answer to a farther remark ‘that I ought to make up my mind clearly black or white’.
‘That I can’t do.... However on the whole, though very unorthodox, I believe I am on the whole most of a Churchwoman, and certainly non-proselytizing, nor, I believe in the least likely to originate any religious difficulty.’
Still he was evidently ‘stumped’, and I daresay I shall hear more of it.
Yet, on the whole, feeling as I do, I cannot regret speaking.
She visited the Principal of Owens’ College, however, and the Headmaster of the Grammar School, drew up a tentative list of names for Council, and had a long talk with Mrs. Gaskell, who promised to be a “Lady Visitor” if the College was founded. (“I explaining it to mean ‘right to visit’.”)
“As to my contumacy (it’s really that and not the heresy!), W. and G. to be consulted. I said how I wished him to do only what he thought right,—yet believing they would be wise to have me(!)
I think he surely wishes it, and, as I should guess he would find his consultees not otherwise inclined, a very small push would decide him that way.
(Stories,—‘The fool hath said in his heart,’ etc. Old sexton loq. ‘I can’t but think, sir, there is a God after all’).”
“Dec. 4th. Came to Rugby last night. The music in chapel again and again bringing me well-nigh to tears,—so weak and thin is one worn.
(Yet should surely notice the good Miss Garrett’s medicine does me—taken about a fortnight now.)...
And how the conviction came (when first this Manchester scheme) ‘Yes,—“be thou but fit for the wall, and thou shalt not be left in the way.” It is true!...
Is Minnie far wrong in her ‘Men have the best of it’? Easiest,—yes!—
Fancy the pleasure of going through School,—College,—returning hallmarked, for good happy well-paid work here.
Yet is the easiest ‘Best’?
Must there not be pioneers?—can their work be easy?
Yet is there not (in many tongues and roads) a ‘noble army of martyrs’?
Shall we like Erasmus ‘not aspire to that honour’?
But, oh, dear, when the heart’s light and brain clear and life sunny, it’s easy to ‘scorn delights’ (having plenty of the reallest) but when the ‘laborious days’ fail and only weary and dim ones remain—when the tunnel narrows and darkens, and nearly all the light and strength seems to have leaked out—
Then—?
‘My Grace is sufficient for thee’. No other help,—‘none other fighteth for us’—and what need?—‘Only Thou, O God.’”
How little her friends could guess the attitude of her mind may be gathered from the entry that follows:
“Dec. 5th. M.’s and my mutual objection to family prayers evidenced by staying out tonight. Justified?
I say, prayer continual and interjectional rather than formal and obligatory.
But follow out logically? Public worship, etc.”
Meanwhile she was hard at work, drawing up schemes for the proposed College, visiting schools and colleges for men, and striving to fit herself for the new work. Mr. Morse must have felt that Mr. Plumptre had recommended a worker of remarkable talents, fine sincerity and most unusual enthusiasm, one whose knowledge of life and of the world was far in advance of what might have been expected from her years. Such qualities have to be paid for, of course. Nature has a rather staggering way of throwing in counterbalancing asperities, and, when S. J.-B. proposed to foster a religious spirit in the college without the formality of daily prayers, he must have begun to realize the inflexibility of the person he was dealing with. He would probably have sympathized with the dictum of Cousin Ellie,—“I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration”!
All we actually know is that he showed no indication of wishing to draw back; and at least one public meeting in support of the scheme was duly held and reported at length in the local papers. Public opinion, however, on the subject, needed more fundamental education than Mr. Morse had allowed for, and—although S. J.-B.’s budget was characterized by the splendid economy that was one of her most striking talents—the project failed for want of adequate financial support.
“Feb. 22nd. Manchester scheme obiit. R.I.P.! I must be really in a bad way to be able to find so few mental tears for this! It does practically close up my foreground again. Heu mihi! Why mayn’t useless people be smothered out of the way if there’s no possibility of being or doing or having?
‘Because you’ve got to learn’, as that good Miss Harry said last night.”
In the midst of these varied personal interests, S. J.-B. did not lose touch with her old girls at Queen’s College. Indeed, when one realizes the intensity of her own experiences, it is rather refreshing to see how whole-heartedly she could enter into those of others.
My dear Lucy,
I feel rather guilty in not having written to you before this, but I do not think that you will attribute the omission to any want of interest in one of my dear old ‘children’.... I have to send you my hearty congratulations and good wishes for the life that seems opening so happily before you. Happiness is a wonderfully solemn thing,—a thing to go down on one’s knees and thank God for....
Don’t be too self-distrustful, dear child,—I don’t believe that you are at all ‘unfit to be a help to anyone’.... Send me as long a letter as your indolence will admit of, and tell me all about your prospects, and whether your engagement is likely to be a short or long one.”
... Having heard from E. B. of your marriage last month, I was not quite so bewildered as I might have been at receiving an epistle from a certain mysterious ‘Lucy Unwin’—
... I am so glad to hear of your being so happy, dear child (dear me, I suppose I ought to be more respectful to so venerable a matron!) I daresay if I heard the other side of the question it would not be so full of wailings over your incompetencies general and particular as yours is.... I should like exceedingly to see you in your new sphere ... and please thank your husband very much for taking me so much on trust as to want to see me,—though perhaps, after all, the real compliment is to you! It will be a great pleasure for me to come to you for a few days when I am next in the North.”North.”
I had hoped to pay you a visit before this, and I am afraid you will be disappointed as well as myself when I tell you it must now, I fear, be indefinitely deferred, for circumstances have made me decide rather hurriedly to pay a long-planned visit to America for the purpose of learning something about the schools and colleges there.
I am to start from Liverpool on Saturday the 27th., and am going to take with me a girl whom you will perhaps hardly remember at Qu: College:—indeed I think she was after your time,—Isabel Bain.
Dear Lucy,
I should like exceedingly to see you if it were possible before sailing for America, and your letter has made me wish more than ever to do so.
If I found it just possible to come to you for one day and night, would you think it worth while to have me? I do not know what the possibilities are,—are you in the town?—or would it be an undertaking to get to you from the station? Would it upset you all terribly if I came and went at unearthly hours as I might have to do?
I should like to see you exceedingly, and I should like very much to see your husband,—if my coming in such a rush and making such a fuss wouldn’t make him hate me.
Thank you very much for your photograph. There are no decent ones of me, but I will see if I can find you up one of the least bad.”
The visit was paid in due course, and proved successful in every way. Mr. Unwin frankly shared his wife’s admiration for the character and gifts of her old college friend, and this was by no means the last visit she paid to their Yorkshire home.
In the meantime S. J.-B. had carried out another idea that had been simmering in her mind for long. It may be remembered how in her childhood she had “bought tracts (for 6d) with Carry,” and had even, apparently, been encouraged by her Father to give them away. The distribution of evangelical tracts was a great feature of the religious world in which she had been brought up, and, with the hopefulness of youth, she felt how much good might be done by circulating helpful religious pamphlets of a non-doctrinal kind. As a first step towards the realization of this scheme, she herself wrote three tracts,[36] and had them printed at her own expense. The most remarkable thing about them—in view of the writer’s youth—is their non-controversial spirit. A Father of the Church could not have written more simply. With proper machinery for distribution they might have met with some considerable success: as it was the poor little booklets crept timidly into the world only to be pronounced sadly wanting in essentials by most of those who read them.
“Very harmless, but very useless,” said Mrs. Jex-Blake, and she at least knew enough of tracts to be an authority on the subject. She had evaded reading these as long as possible, and, of course it was not to the dearly-loved writer of them that she made the crushing comment.
The Guardian, strangely enough, reviewed them rather favourably, and a few total strangers wrote to say that this was the thing for which they had long been looking; but on the whole appreciation was rare.
“Frankly, I call them Cobbe and water,” said Mr. Morse.
For the Kingdom of Heaven is a treasure hid in a field, and S. J.-B. never realized how few can avail themselves of the treasure without first buying the field.
“I have such a feeling that with the new world, a new life will open.”
So S. J.-B. had written in October 1864, and, seven months later, she sailed for Boston. This crossing of the Atlantic was another considerable venture for the young woman of those days; and, although S. J.-B. took with her a number of introductions, she knew no one on the other side. She was fortunate, however, in her travelling companion, Miss Isabel Bain (now Mrs. James Brander, H.M. Inspectress of Schools for Madras, retired), a young girl of exceptional charm and promise, in whose education S. J.-B. and her parents had taken a deep and active interest.
It is scarcely necessary to say that both Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake regarded the new enterprise with profound misgiving: a few days before the parting Mrs. Jex-Blake had written to Mrs. Ballantyne:
“I was so sadly selfish and engrossed about America the few hours you were here, that I must write a line to tell you how grateful I feel for all your kindness to Sophy, and how thankful I am that she has such a friend to consult with in this hour of need. I hope you did not suffer for the way in which you were plagued here: it really was very hard: though I quite believe you don’t think so.
Tuesday. Sophy’s letter has just come, and I do indeed need your prayers and sympathy. The wrench it is to me to have her go is indescribable, but I hope and believe my view will be more reasonable as time goes on. Any way, I know I shall have strength to bear. It is quite a panic, and I feel as if I must run away from it. Yet I would not prevent it if I could. I should have been very thankful for an older companion....
I ought not to plague you, her good kind friend.
May God bless you and all dear to you.
I hope to write you a less selfish letter another time. I am hardly myself now. Is it not curious,—I have such a prejudice against Americans that I hardly ever will read a book describing American manners. I hate descriptions of low life.”
Surely the frequent twinkle was returning to her eye when she wrote the closing words of the postscript? In any case there is no doubt about it a short time later when a question arose about Miss Bain’s leaving S. J.-B. and becoming a student in one of the colleges they had visited together:
“I think Daddy has a terror of only your bleached bones(!) being found, if you went about without a companion.”
The two girls left Liverpool on May 27th, and, after experiencing some rough weather which confined them to their berths, they staggered gallantly up on deck to enjoy the voyage and to make the acquaintance of their fellow-passengers. “A very nice Scotch Independent, Dr. Raleigh of Canonbury,” is specially noted.
The great excitement of the voyage is described in a letter to her Mother:
“After I had done writing to you, we were summoned by a cry of ‘Icebergs!’ and up we ran to see a bright white light on the horizon, just visible, right on our track. Soon another came in sight and it was really grand the next hour. The evening hardly beginning to close in, but the cold intense, yet so beautiful.... On went the ship, tearing on to the icebergs, that grew whiter and larger every minute,—great cliffs of white rearing themselves out of the waves that beat into spray at their base,—looking so strong and grim and beautiful.”
On June 8th the Africa reached Boston about midnight, and next morning the two young women went on shore to begin the new life. The weather was very warm and most of the people to whom they had introductions were out of town. The travellers suffered a good deal from the heat and from various minor inconveniences due mainly to the strangeness and expensiveness of life in general; but S. J.-B. does not fail to put on record how much they enjoyed the ice-cream!
Dr. Lucy Sewall was at her post, but Mrs. Peter Taylor, in providing this introduction had given the wrong address, and it was a couple of days before they succeeded in finding her. The meeting was destined to be full of significance in determining S. J.-B.’s future career.
It was an interesting moment in which to visit the States. The war was over, but feeling still ran high, and, although the travellers met with much kindness and hospitality, they were not a little surprised to find themselves in an atmosphere of deep resentment against England.
“Oh, dear, How they turned on the tap, and talked right on end when they got near politics, only pausing to wonder at our ‘ignorance’ in England (that being, of course, the only source of difference of opinion with them). Finally, after listening with the utmost patience indefinitely—only devoutly wishing to kick over the table—I got mentally [sic] collared by Miss Peabody with an accusation of being ‘still incredulous’, to which I replied very frankly, that ‘certainly till I heard both sides I could form no definite opinion.’
Emerson was refreshing after the rest, inasmuch as, after speaking, he would allow you to answer.... A Miss Elizabeth Hoar told me she had seen Carlyle in London in 1862, and that he had said to her,—‘So you’re quarrelling out there? Why don’t you let the Southerners go to the devil with their niggers if they like, and you go to Heaven with your virtues if you can?’ Rather sensible, I thought,—from one point of view at any rate.”
There is a pleasant little letter from Emerson, written after this meeting:
“Concord. Monday 14th June. [1865.]
Dear Miss Blake,
I am sorry to be so very slow in sending you the address of Mr. Fields’ good farmer in the White Mountains region. It is Selden C. Willey, Compton Village, 6 miles from Plymouth, New Hampshire. I looked for it immediately on my return from Mrs. Mann’s, but could not find it, and now today have stumbled on it in looking for something else. Tis probable that you may have seen Mr. Fields himself before this time. When I have found my right correspondent at Oberlin, I shall hope to bring you my letter in person.
Miss Blake.”
The diary continues:
“Everyone most wonderfully kind and helpful to us personally—lots of offers of introductions, etc. That nice Dr. Sewall very anxious that I should not tire myself out and ‘get sick’. By the bye one really can converse with her, I think.”
There is a kind little note from Dr. Sewall also:
“My dear Miss Blake,
As usual this evening I enjoyed your society so much that I forgot to say half that I wanted to....
If you call on Mr. Emerson today, I think you had better call in the afternoon, as he told me he was engaged Wednesday and Saturday forenoons.
Don’t have any neuralgia when you come to the Hospital today, or I may want to try my Electromagnetic machine on your face. I have not seen Dr. Zakrzewska yet, but I want you to come early.
Dr. Lucy Sewall was at this time a young woman of 28, a worthy descendant of “a long line of truly noble ancestry.”[37] She held the appointment of Resident Physician to the New England Hospital for Women and Children (an institution which had been founded in great measure through the exertions of her father, the Hon. Samuel Sewall), but there was nothing about her to suggest that she had adopted what was at that time an unusual line of life for a woman. Singularly girlish in appearance, she was and remained throughout life so gentle and womanly that, until one knew her well, her reserves of strength were a source of repeated surprise. “So simple and humble and kindly,” writes S. J.-B. at this time,—“said she ‘could not succeed in learning to think enough before she spoke about a case.’”
No wonder S. J.-B. was attracted. A warm friendship sprang up between the two young women, a friendship by means of which S. J.-B. was introduced primarily to the world of Medicine, and, secondarily, to the wide question of Feminism. She had been living, of course, in a feminist world at home, and a very choice world of its kind; but here the movement had become more explicit, its aims were clearly defined and partially realized. It had, no doubt, lost a certain amount of charm in the process, but that is the fate of all movements the world over. They too have to be worked out “in the commonplace clay with which the world provides us.”
In any case S. J.-B. was profoundly influenced by the change of atmosphere. Her conception of woman’s work and woman’s sphere began to widen out. On June 22nd she writes to her Mother:
“We saw Miss Crocker the other day,—late Mathematical professor at Antioch,—and she impressed me extremely with her quiet dignity and wisdom, and her tremendous Mathematics,—I should so like to study under her some day. I felt like an uppish dwarf beside some strong quiet giant.”
And a few days later:
“By the way that wonderful astronomer, Maria Mitchell, whom I told you we were going to see, is a very nice woman—grand and able and strong and kindly.... She is to be a professor at Poughkeepsie, and, if we go there, I shall certainly hope to learn of her,—though I did not know that Astronomy would ever have come into my life. Any way it will be a great pleasure to know such a woman.”
On the same day she records in her diary:
“Sat for a couple of hours in Dr. Sewall’s dispensary this morning. Some 36 cases heard and helped more or less. Some coming with bright faces,—‘So much better, Doctor,’—some in pain enough, poor souls. Dr. Sewall with such a kindly ready sympathy, and such clear firm treatment for them all. Certainly the right woman in the right place, except in as far as she herself gets to look sadly fagged and tired sometimes.”
The state of S. J.-B.’s own health continued very unsatisfactory. “What is one to do,” she says, “when one has alternate days of ‘feeling like a tallow candle,’ and days of feeling rather grand and energetic, like yesterday, when my ‘book’ was begun with a bounce?” After watching her for some weeks, Dr. Sewall pronounced her “worn out in mind and body,” and advised a holiday among the hills until the excessive heat was over. So she paid a delightful visit to Professor and Mrs. Rogers at Lunenburg, and then went on to West Compton near the White Mountains. “The railway (a single line) cut through delicious woods with no fence or wall, just through the wildest glades full of ferns and pyrolas,—vistas of sun on fir and maple boles,—then again by the side of one lovely lake after another, a perfect prodigality of beauty.”
Darling Mother,—I don’t think I shall be able to write by the next mail, as we are going for a few days’ excursion round the mountains, so I must send you off now as long a letter as I can manage, telling you what we have been doing just lately.
First and foremost, I have been coming in useful as ‘teamster’, in Yankee parlance, having been chiefly employed in driving my neighbours all about the country lately. You would have laughed, I think, had you seen my ‘span’ (pair of horses) the other day,—one brown, pretty high,—the other mouse coloured and some three inches lower, the most delightful variety prevailing in the harnessing and general appearance of the two. Behind these beauties came six of us in a big rough country ‘wagon’, all of painted wood,—two big seats fixed in a sort of open cart.
We went through such a ford,—the Penningewassett River, and (when the horses didn’t bite each other) we got on grandly....”grandly....”
“You haven’t the least idea what that word ‘woods’ means,—in England there are just a few acres of carefully preserved trees and ‘no trespassers allowed’. Here you plunge into a vast forest, miles and miles every way,—lucky if you can find a path at all, else guiding yourself by sun and stream and taking hours and hours to get a mile or two,—yet all through so grand, so green, and so delicious! If you could just have been with us yesterday! Every few minutes we found some great tree fallen across our path, or some black bog of decayed cedar or pine,—oh, the scents of those!—perfectly delicious;—and then round we had to go, creeping, jumping or gliding round the obstruction. Then we would come to some little clearing, and catch such views of the mountains we were shut in with,—then on again and hardly see daylight through the dense trees. And such mosses, such ferns, such berries!
Then over the river somehow from rock to rock, and such a scramble up among the cascades which came leaping down like liquid silver in the sunlight, and such pools we did so want to bathe in, and had to [refrain] for lack of time and towels! They called the distance 2½ or 3 miles, but we took just 3 hours to get there,—and then coming back pretty sharply in about half the time. The only grief to me was—what perhaps you will hardly sympathize in—that we didn’t come across any bear. There are a good many left in the woods and one hears every now and then of their being met, but they are getting few, and they are proportionately timid and modest, running off full speed if they see you. Wouldn’t it have been fun to see one?...
I think hardly anything strikes an Englisher more than the no-value of wood here. Over the water it’s half high treason to hurt a tree;—here, if you want a napkin-ring, you strip the bark off the first birch you come to and make a lot; or, if you take it into your head, set fire to the woods anywhere and have a bonfire of a dozen trees, and no one says a word. We have seen woods on fire over and over again, and no one says more than,—‘Oh, somebody’s fired the wood’; and the odd thing is it doesn’t seem to spread as one would expect.
One comes continually to clearings full of blackened stumps not yet grubbed up,—the beginning of a garden or house place perhaps. I want to see a great big forest fire some day,—and I only wish I might see a prairie on fire too; only that is said to be horribly dangerous. It is so funny to hear here, as when I was asking about a certain road (from St. Louis to California), ‘Yes, it’s the shortest, but the Indians are cross just now and have been scalping a lot of people there’!
Well, darling, we had such a drive home by starlight last night, and all enjoyed our day hugely. When we got in I suppose I walked slightly lame or something, for my greeting was,—‘I guess you’re tired, an’t you? You’re kind o’ waggling’!”
One is quite sorry to see the Boston postmark again; but the high spirits do not flag. “You don’t know,” she writes to her Mother, “what an immense thing it is for us to have got free admission to the Woman’s Hospital life here,—we are always doing something jolly together with the students and doctors,—all women, by the way.
Dr. Sewall is resident Physician, and is always asking us to spend jolly evenings there,—or to join them in going to theatres, etc. Yesterday we made an expedition in the evening to a famous place for ice-cream, 8 of us there were—4 M.D.s (one of whom is a splendid surgeon,—the first female surgeon I have heard of) two students and we two. After the ices we went back to the Hospital, and played a most ridiculous game of cards called ‘Muggins’, keeping us in roars of laughter half the time. Then Dr. Tyng (the surgeon) sang, and, among other things gave us a specimen of the ‘Shaker’ singing—with its very peculiar religious dance,—have you heard about the Shakers? I hope to see them and then I will tell you.
But can’t you understand how refreshing it is to slip into the bright life of all these working people—working hard all day, and then so ready for fun when work’s over? It reminds me of the full colour and life of the old London times when all we working women were together.”
So she utilised every opportunity of getting information likely to help in her study of the conditions of Women’s education. She regretted in after life that her dislike of ‘lion-hunting’ had prevented her from making—or cultivating—the acquaintance of well-known people who did not seem likely to be of direct help in her work. Not that she disdained the opportunities when they actually came within reach. Here is an interesting episode in the course of her wanderings:
“Sept. 9th. Went over to Concord, Mass. by 11 a.m. train. At the station found Waldo Emerson just fetching his wife and friends. I spoke to him and he very cordially asked us to ‘take our dinner’ with him. We accepted, first paying a visit to Mrs. Horace Mann and Miss Peabody. Mrs. Mann gave me a letter to Mr. Pennel (her nephew) at St. Louis, whither I am advised to go after Oberlin and Antioch perhaps. Poughkeepsie we must visit later, by wish of the President, Dr. Raymond.
Went on to Emerson’s to dinner. Was received by one of the daughters, Ellen,—simple and kindly, the ‘housekeeper’, I should think—and shown into a room with several people.... About 3 p.m. dinner served, more English-wise than most, though with a new Irish maid for waiter, who looked anxiously to ‘Ellen’ for orders. Another daughter, Edith (about to be married) and a son, Edward. They had sherry on the table, which I have only seen at the Rogers’ besides,... Pears and grapes,—partly the queer sage grapes with tarry flavour,—on a pretty basket, large and shallow.
Mr. Emerson struck me as having one of the sweetest expressions I have ever seen on a man’s mouth. He was very kind in offering help. We talked besides a little about Swedenborg, for whom he seemed to have some admiration. ‘To be read as one reads a poet’s ideas,—not critically,’ he said, and spoke of the pre-inspiration works on science, etc., as really valuable.
Mrs. Emerson talked a little about ‘women’s questions’, female franchise, etc.—and spoke of the wonderful blinding power of habit,—as in slavery question,—looking to Christianity in its advance to set all to rights.
I remarked that few had done more harm to the cause than St. Paul by some of his words. She replied very truly that the fault lay rather in those who would rigidly apply such words and consider them binding out of all connection of time and place.”place.”
It was left to a later friend to point out that St. Paul showed himself in this respect the John Stuart Mill of his day when he asserted that ‘in Jesus Christ is neither male nor female.’
“Speaking a little to an old schoolfellow of Emerson’s he told me it was hard for anyone to say what Emerson’s opinions were. I said I had heard of him as a pantheist; he said at any rate he was one of the best of men and had been from boyhood up.”
A few days later she visited Niagara,—“the only ‘pleasure’ thing” she tells her Mother, “I resolved to do if possible. We hope to spend next Sunday there,—not a bad church, will it be?”be?” From Niagara she writes to Mrs. Unwin:
My dear Lucy,
I congratulate you with all my heart on the birth of your little son! I think by this time you will have forgotten all doubts and difficulties, and all but pleasant feelings of responsibility, in your great content, have you not? God very seldom sends us either duties or blessings without showing us how to fulfil and enjoy and use them, and I do not doubt but you will have found in your own case all sorts of new powers and instincts develop with the need of them, and will have by this time a pretty definite idea ‘What to do with a baby’—Is it not so?...
I wish there existed a visual telegraph (if such a phrase may be coined) and that I could give you a glimpse of the scene I have in front of me, and which is continually stealing my eyes from my paper. No less than Niagara in its full glory!—and what that glory is I don’t think any but eyes can tell. I have seen a good deal of beauty and grandeur in my life, in Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, etc., but I think never anything so wonderfully, bewitchingly, grandly beautifullybeautifully as this. People talk of being disappointed in Niagara, but I think it can only be because, for the first moment, the enormous width of the Falls (900 feet in one case, 2000 in the other,—separated by an island) prevents their recognizing their height as well, or else they have not got the right natures to admire with! (and I think that last is oftener the case than people think).
It gives one most wonderfully the feeling of power and immensity,—the sort of feeling that was [expressed] long ago, ‘When I consider the work of Thy fingers, what is man that Thou are mindful of him?’—and yet the feeling of infinite beauty and harmony too. Before leaving we go under the Falls, and into the ‘Cave of the Winds’ behind a vast curtain of water, and that I think must give one almost more strongly still the impression of might and vastness. It is very little use to talk about it any more, I wish you could see it!
Thank you very much for writing to my Mother about A. I hope she will get away from her present uncomfortable place,—it would give me great pleasure if she came to you. Only I warn you I shall claim her some day!
Goodbye, dear child. With all good wishes for you and yours, I am ever
From Niagara she went via Cleveland to Oberlin, and so began the tour which she afterwards described in A Visit to some American Schools and Colleges (published by Macmillan in 1867). She had been very kindly advised by Dr. Hill, the President of Harvard, as to the Colleges best worth visiting, and the experience proved both interesting and useful. At Oberlin the two sexes were almost equally represented, and “coloured” students formed about a third of the whole number. “In the year of my visit,” she writes, “it so happened that the only woman who graduated was a coloured girl, originally a slave, who had not even then paid her full ransom to her former owners.” A considerable proportion of students of both sexes supported themselves wholly or in part by doing the domestic work of the establishment. Manners were rather rough even for the America of those days, but the standard of behaviour was high, and the religious atmosphere almost overwhelming.
From Oberlin she went on to Hillsdale, St. Louis, and Antioch (at Yellow Springs in Ohio) spending a few days or weeks at each; and afterwards she visited a number of schools. What impressed her perhaps more than anything else was the success with which the joint education of men and women was carried on, and this impression was destined to play its part in the later struggles of her life.
“If anyone asks you again about my views of comparative English and American teaching,” she writes to her Mother, “I suppose I may say that I believe on the whole American girls are more thoroughly, and especially more universally, taught fundamental things. They learn Mathematics more thoroughly, and Latin more invariably; their knowledge of modern languages is decidedly inferior (very naturally, being so far from France, Germany, etc.) and their English and their manners both less polished. But I should think a decidedly smaller number of them are able to manage to grow up quite ignorant!” It annoyed her a good deal that, in the matter of pronunciation, an American will always ask you “what dictionary you go by,” and seems quite unable to understand the unwritten law of language which in England reigns supreme, and from which, if a dictionary differs, it simply condemns itself.
Her birthday inspired a breezy letter from her brother:
My dear Sophy,
Many happy returns of your 26th birthday, as they would say in Ireland: and may they ache find you younger and fresher!
We have been enjoying three very fresh but windy weeks here; and are now leaving tomorrow for Rugby. We leave Violet, Katharine and Netta here, however, as they are only half through measles....
We have ridden a good deal, been with the hounds more than usual; and not read much. Lecky on Rationalism is the best book I have read lately, of the fairly solid sort; Swinburne’s Atalanta the best new poem; Citoyenne Jacqueline the best new novel; Mr. ——’s the worst stale sermons. Is there anything good out in American literature of late? Artemus Ward is good in his line, but his line is audacious.
I should like six months in America immensely; locomotive, with introductions, I don’t know the politics of the people you are with or have been with; but I was always a Northerner.... I wonder how the Mexican business will end: and cannot pretend to guess: but I hope Louis Napoleon ... will soon withdraw his troops, and Maximilian will collapse. We are on the eve of a noisy session, I expect; Home Office stung by reform into a queer tarantula, and Colonial secretaries badgered about Jamaica by both sides of the House. I cannot pretend to judge till we get more evidence: but as yet none has turned up which in my eyes justifies the execution of Gordon—who for all that was probably deep.... Have I wearied you out with politics? or have you not read so far?
She answered the letter while the stimulus of it was fresh: