My Darling,
Words cannot express my thankfulness at your success, and release from anxiety. I did not fear because I did not see why they should be unjust, but I am more than glad that it is settled.
I ought to have scolded you some days ago for more grapes. I am very forgetful, and I really sleep so well that I do not require them.
Well, dear, I am quite unsettled with the good news. Hoping to meet so soon, and with great congratulations from Tom, and Hetty, and Carry, and more love than a letter will take, ever your loving Mother,
I heartily echo your ‘Thank God.’ I am so thankful I cannot settle.”
A few weeks later Miss Pechey and Miss Clark also passed the examination.
“You will like to hear,” writes Miss Pechey, “that Professor Hidber told Miss Clark that the Professors were much pleased with your exam. and said it was evident that you had studied well. It is more satisfactory, I think, to hear it indirectly like that than if they had told you so.
Miss Clark says she is very glad you answered better than I did. So am I: I only wish I had answered better for the credit of my countrywomen.”
It still remained to get on the English Register through the newly opened portal of the Irish College. S. J.-B. and Miss Pechey spent some time in London, reading and attending the Brompton Hospital, where Dr. Symes Thompson proved very helpful.
There is a sheaf of blank pages in the diary, and then:
‘One fight more,—the worst and the last!’ Oh, dear, if I pass this Exam. I shall deserve all I may get if I ever go in for another!
Since Nov. 1st.,—indeed one might say since September 1st,—hardly a day of rest and respite, but brain worked at highest pressure—often when almost a blank.
Now it is over and ‘waiting for the verdict.’
Off tonight for Dublin with E. P. Dr. A[tkins] also to join. ‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico.’ The various tests loom vague and large. Diagnosis at bedside,—horrible,—though enormously helped by Brompton experience. Recognition of drugs and things under microscope. 4 written exams. 2 hrs. oral, etc., etc.
I feel as if I really had fairly mastered my subjects and must know more than the average medical practitioner just fledged,—not to say have more sense.
But the stake is so enormous. A pluck would be so perfectly awful after all antecedents.
But in spite of my work, my brain is wonderfully well and clear.”
“Monday, May 7th. 9.45 p.m. Books closed after 4½ hours’ reading and examination,—not to be opened probably till all is over!
Be the fates propitious,—as I really think they ought, ... I the most comfortable of the three. ‘Where angels fear...?’ No,—I rather think on the principle of ‘While the child, etc.’
I’ve done my utmost,—and results are God’s.”
One is thankful to record that results were safe in His hands (as indeed S. J.-B. would have said they must have been whatever the examiners had decided). Two or three days later the three women, with a number of men, were solemnly summoned to the Board Room,—“repeated declaration after Registrar, then signed book, and Dr. Hayden, as Vice-President, took the hand of each and ‘admitted’ us!”
“Oh, dear, after long travail, good repose!”
“All dreadfully overwrought and tired. E. P. and I came to fisticuffs over Mrs. A.’s Memorial to London University. Pair of fools!”
A characteristic telegram went off at once to Mrs. Jex-Blake:
“Success just declared for all three of us.”
And within an hour this was followed up by a letter:
“... We are all so happy! The Exam. has been pretty stiff.
The waiting Mother sends a mere scrap by return:
“I don’t know how to be thankful enough that all is so well thro’. Nothing will seem a trouble now. God bless you,
All going well with Pony, Turk, me, etc.”
And on the heels of this all the other congratulations pour in. “If I could I would ring the bells from Bow to Beersheba,” writes a friend and patient.
One almost feels that, if the bells had known the whole story, they would have rung of their own accord.
The friendly reader will feel, without doubt, that the year 1876-77 had done something to justify its passage, so far as the women were concerned, but the year 1876-77 was giving more than this. S. J.-B.’s main ideal, “Not me but us,” remained to be realized. The fundamental requisite, training in a large General Hospital, was no longer practically attainable in Great Britain. A handful of women had scaled the coveted height by means of steps cut, as it were, in ice that melted behind them. It remained to prepare a permanent way for those who were following on. And the year 1876-77 was destined to give this too.
Mrs. Anderson and others had been endeavouring to obtain admission for women students to some of the wards of the London Hospital, and for a time their efforts had seemed likely to prove successful. They ended in the failure to which all the patient workers were becoming so accustomed, but meanwhile “that which was for”—the women—“was gravitating towards them.”
Before the end of 1876 Mr. Stansfeld had written:
“Private.
Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I will bear the London University in mind as soon as I see anybody....
I met Mrs. Garrett Anderson at dinner the other day; she did not seem to have much hope or plan about the School in any way.
I have however something to tell you that I think you will be rather pleased to hear. Mrs. Stansfeld and I went to Clapham today to call on the Hopgoods, with whom we had become friendly at Whitby: and Mr. Hopgood is Chairman of the Board of the Grays Inn Lane Hospital. We found them both with us, but strange to the question.
I am to send Mr. Hopgood something to read, and he is to consider whether anything is possible there; he does not appear to be in awe of the staff.
Just as I had begun to talk the Editor of the Contemporary Review [? Nineteenth Century] came in and listened and then expressed general sympathy in a timid way, but asked me if I would write him a paper shewing a practical way and outcome; and I undertook at once to do so.
The paper I can manage though I am glad to think I shall be likely to see you before I send it; but in dealing with Mr. Hopgood I very much wish you were here.... What time in January shall you be back, probably time enough for us to act together in the matter.
In subsequent letters Mr. Stansfeld writes:
“Jan. 5th. 77. I shall not consult anyone if I can avoid it. I think you and I have the best chance of managing it alone.”
“Jan. 13. 77. I congratulate you seriously and sincerely; it was time to get that particular anxiety off your mind, and to be M.D. at all events....
I will defer what I may have to say till we meet; but we’ll win and no mistake.”
Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I have your letter, but feel a little doubtful about seeing Dr. Chambers until after Sunday when I am to see Mr. Hopgood.
You may judge of what that interview should be, how hopeful and how critical, by his letter just received, which I copy on the other side.
I think that you ought to be with me on Sunday if possible. I see there are plenty of trains.
We might be with him say at 3 p.m. If you would come here and lunch at 1.30 I would drive you down.
Pray telegraph reply tomorrow that I may write and let him know.
Follows the copy of Mr. Hopgood’s letter:
“I shall be at home all Sunday and glad to see you.... We dine at 5.
I see my way so far clear that on receiving a formal application from your Association it shall be without delay submitted to our Weekly Board,—and I think they will forthwith summon a special meeting of the Committee of Management, whose decision will be final for the current year! My wish may be father to the thought, but I think that if you can make some such proposition as that we talked of we have a good prospect of success.
My wife feels such a deep interest in the success of the movement that she wished me to say that if you think it desirable to form a guarantee fund, her name may be put down as a subscriber or guarantor to the extent of £100.”
There is no record of that interesting and critical Sunday, but all seems to have gone as Mr. Stansfeld would have wished, for a week or two later Mr. Hopgood writes to S. J.-B.,—“I heartily wish that every success may attend this movement,—if so I know to whom it will be chiefly due.”
During S. J.-B.’s preoccupations the School had been in other hands.
On March 13th Mr. Stansfeld writes,
“Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
Have you noticed the article in the Daily News of today on the London School of M. It is not written in our interest,—you are not mentioned and I not much; but there is a list of names rather new to me, omitting, however, Lord Aberdare, a true friend.[130]
It looks as if tomorrow were pretty certain.
Close on the heels of this letter came a telegram:
“Mar. 15th. Right Hon. J. Stansfeld, London, to Miss Jex-Blake 13 Sussex Square, Brighton,
London Free Hospital have unanimously accepted my proposal. Come before ten o’clock Saturday. I go out half past ten.”
Once more there was great rejoicing, and Mr. Stansfeld forwards to S. J.-B. a cordial letter from Mrs. Anderson:
Dear Mr. Stansfeld,
As I was not able to join in the cheer which I am glad to hear was given for you at the School on Saturday, will you please accept my very heartiest thanks for your grand success at Gray’s Inn Road. We all owe more to you than to anyone. I do not imagine there will be any difficulty about the £700 a year for five years. I shall hope to be able to contribute £50 a year as my share.
One thing more that wonderful year had given. Miss Edith Shove, who had accompanied Miss Pechey on the mission to Ireland, had made formal application to the University of London for admission to medical examination and degree. In February Mr. Smith Osier moved in the Senate that her request should be granted, and the motion was carried by 14 votes to 7. The majority consisted of the Chancellor (Lord Granville), Vice-Chancellor (Sir John Lubbock, M.P.), Lord Kimberley, Dr. Billing, Mr. Fitch, Sir William Gull, Mr. Heywood, Mr. Hutton, The Master of the Rolls (Right Hon. Sir G. Jessel), Right Hon. R. Lowe, M.P., Mr. Osler, Sir James Paget,[131] Lord Arthur Russell and Dr. William Smith. The minority consisted of Lord Cardwell, the Dean of Lincoln, Mr. Goldsmid, Sir William Jenner, Dr. Quain, Dr. Sharpey and Dr. Storrar.
S. J.-B. received the intelligence in the following note from Dr. Archibald Billing, the father of the profession, who had taken his own degree at Oxford in 1818:
“Dear Friend,
All right. I was at my post and gave my opinion rather freely. We had a majority about two to one, but you shall have the minutes as soon as printed. Some of the medicos rather recanted.
One last storm was raised in Convocation about the action of the Senate, on the ground that it dealt with the Faculty of Medicine only, but this final obstruction only proved the truth of Mr. Stansfeld’s wise dictum that when the hour for reform has come all that opponents can do is to widen its character or to precipitate its advent. On January 14th, 1878, a new Charter admitting women to all degrees was laid by the Senate before Convocation, and was carried by a majority of 241 to 132.
So much good that year had brought—that annus mirabilis 1877—one must not be surprised if it brought some evil also. And, to S. J.-B. personally, it dealt one heavy blow. The School, as her Mother said, was her living child. She had conceived it, brought it forth, tended it, fought for it,—done most of the daily work it involved, with the help of a lady secretary she herself had trained. Until she was a qualified doctor, however, she did not wish her name to appear either on the Council or on the Governing Body. In all the early papers it occurs only as Trustee.
But she had always looked forward to her registration as something that would initiate a new order of things. That platform gained, and the dust of the struggle and fight left behind, she expected to take officially, as Honorary Secretary, the position she had filled hitherto without any recognition at all. Up till now she had been constantly harassed, driven,—striving for something that always receded when it seemed within her grasp. No wonder if she had often been hasty, high-handed, difficult. Now all that, so she thought, was past. We recall the dreams and ideals of her youth,—how she had longed to organize some fine new school for girls, of which, conceivably, she might be worthy to be the head.
“I am beginning to hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life—I may yet be fit to be the head for which I am looking so earnestly.”
We have seen with what searchings of heart she laid aside this ideal for the long struggle of her medical career; but from first to last she never laid aside the sympathetic interest in her colleagues and juniors which was perhaps the most striking characteristic of her professional life. Is it strange if she now looked forward to a realization of the whole dream ?
In any case that realization was not to be. Her enforced absences in the matter of her examination had given people a chance to do without her. We have seen that they had not always found her particularly easy to work with. “You wouldn’t let me muddle, and you wouldn’t let me dawdle, and how could I be happy?” one of her “daughters” used to cry in the radiant success of later years: and although it would not be fair to generalize this into a solution of the whole difficulty, it goes a long way to account for it. There were those who were thankful that things should be done a little less efficiently and more easily,—thankful to have a little more say in matters for which they felt themselves partially responsible. There were those who looked forward with sinking of heart to the time when S. J.-B. would return and really take up the reins.
We have seen repeatedly that she never realized the strain of “difficulty” in her own nature, and she always had a cohort of loyal supporters; but she must have heard—or guessed—something of what was going on, for she wrote to Mr. Stansfeld that the task of being Honorary Secretary was too onerous to be undertaken except at the unanimous wish of those concerned. Perhaps Mrs. Thorne—Dr. Atkins—Mrs. Anderson—would care to undertake the task? Probably she knew for a fact that the two first named would refuse it; and it must have seemed impossible that Mrs. Anderson—overwhelmed as she was with other work—would entertain the suggestion.
S. J.-B. was still in Ireland when the question came up. Mrs. Thorne proposed S. J.-B. as Honorary Secretary, and someone else proposed Mrs. Anderson, both nominations being duly seconded.
Mrs. Anderson was in a difficult position, and said so frankly. She did not wish to take an unfair advantage over her colleague; but if it was to be for the good of the School—?
Mr. Stansfeld and the Dean (Mr. Norton, who was always S. J.-B.’s staunch supporter) were somewhat at a loss, and so no doubt were others; it was not an easy situation for anybody. After some talk the meeting was adjourned. Everything pointed to Mrs. Anderson’s election.
But, when it came to the point, this was more than S. J.-B. could stand. Many lesser people would have accepted the situation gracefully, concealing any heartburning they might have felt, but this was just what S. J.-B. could not do. It was partly a personal question, of course. With every desire and effort to be fair, Mrs. Anderson had always looked at S. J.-B.’s life and work through the wrong end of the telescope, so to speak, and it is not easy to appreciate fully the people who make no secret of the fact that they take that view of us.
But the personal question was not all. We remember how warmly S. J.-B. had spoken of her colleague in the old days, as “running where I crawl,”—how she had triumphed in every stage of her colleague’s success. She honestly felt that Mrs. Anderson was already too fully occupied to undertake so big a job,—felt that, humanly speaking, Mrs. Anderson could only lend her name, and do the work by proxy.
And even that does not exhaust the subject. The truth is that S. J.-B., to the day of her death and with all her faults, was an incorrigible idealist; and Mrs. Anderson, rich though she was in excellent qualities, seemed to her to be lacking in certain capabilities of insight and imagination which outweighed everything else.
“Put me utterly aside if need be!” she had cried in the self-surrender of her adolescence.
And now she was taken at her word. But it was not easy to see the “need be.” For a time it was blotted out by the bitter experience of personal opposition.
It was a painful situation all round, but like so many painful situations, it called forth something fine. Mrs. Thorne was persona grata with all parties, and finally Mrs. Thorne stepped into the breach and allowed herself to be elected Honorary Secretary of the School.
“About the best possible,” wrote S. J.-B. in her diary, “with her excellent sense and perfect temper. SoSo much better than I.”
It involved a definite sacrifice, for, although Mrs. Thorne had taken all her classes with distinction, she had only passed one professional examination; and she was not one of those who are content to scrape through. She had aimed at a London degree, and had even talked of taking her whole course over again in order to fulfil every requirement. Dr. Sewall had long since singled her out as “the doctor” in potentiality among the English medical women.
Already family claims had made her pause. This new claim, combined with the others, proved more than she could withstand. She cast aside her own ambitions, and made the success of the School her main object in life.
A breezy way this of paraphrasing the more familiar passage:
But what one really wants to express is,—See the amount of work, the number of people it took to achieve this one bit of human evolution! Even the many names in this book are culled from a great multitude.
It was S. J.-B. who opened the subject boldly up, and forced the whole world to discuss it. It was she who—in the eye of the whole world—led the Edinburgh fight to its unforeseen sequel in Parliament and in the opening of the London School.
Miss Pechey was a loyal and stimulating comrade throughout, disarming opponents by the personal charm, intelligenceintelligence and humour which eventually opened the Irish College and gained the actual concession of the right of registration.
Mrs. Thorne contributed a fine undercurrent of stability. It was not her way to write picturesque letters that lend themselves to quotation, but it was mainly owing to her that the London School became a lasting and conspicuous success.[133]
Pari passu with all this, as we have seen, and antecedently to any of it,—Mrs. Anderson was quietly showing the English world that a woman can be a reliable and successful doctor.
Fine records all four, and surely no less fine was the brave, wise, unwearying championship of Professor Masson and Sir James Stansfeld, without whom—humanly speaking—nothing could have been achieved at all.
Sir James Stansfeld would not have allowed us to draw the line there. In an able sketch of the whole movement up to 1877, in the Nineteenth Century, he concludes his survey with the following significant words:
“One thing more remains to record. These pages will, I think, have presented to the reader’s mind evidence of a tough and persistent and continuous struggle. Such struggles do not persist and succeed, according to my experience, without the accompanying fact, the continuous thread, as it were, of one constant purpose and dominant will. Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake has made that greatest of all contributions to the end attained. I do not say that she has been the ultimate cause of success. The ultimate cause has been simply this, that the time was at hand. It is one of the lessons of the history of progress that when the time for a reform has come you cannot resist it, though, if you make the attempt, what you may do is to widen its character or precipitate its advent. Opponents, when the time has come, are not merely dragged at the chariot wheels of progress—they help to turn them. The strongest force, whichever way it seems to work, does most to aid. The forces of greatest concentration here have been, in my view, on the one hand the Edinburgh University led by Sir Robert Christison, on the other the women claimants led by Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake. Defeated at Edinburgh, she carried her appeal to the highest court, that most able to decide and to redress, the High Court of Parliament representing the Nation itself. The result we see at last. Those who hail it as the answer which they sought have both to thank, in senses and proportions which they may for themselves decide.”[134]
It would be easy to close on this note, but it is on the earlier part of Sir James Stansfeld’s conclusion that one prefers to dwell. A tough and persistent struggle is indeed recorded in these pages—it was only on working through the vast mass of original documents that the present writer formed the faintest conception how tough and persistent that struggle had been—and yet what will strike the reader most is that it was emphatically not a “one man fight.” S. J.-B. never said “I” in connection with it. “You see we were so splendidly helped,” was her almost invariable comment on looking back.
And she was splendidly helped. Not only by her fellow-students, by friendly professors, by the Editor of the Scotsman, and by those who would fain have been her patients. All that one was prepared to find. The amazing thing is the way in which—when all of these were almost paralyzed by the strength of the opposition (yes, and by her mistakes)—help came from somewhere. It might be the working-man, sending her a shilling to represent his sympathy, or the statesman in a London club, throwing down his newspaper with the determination that that woman should be baited no longer. In any case help came.
Truly, as Sir James Stansfeld said, the time was at hand.
And Newman is perfectly right when he says that, if the individual be powerful-minded and the cause good, the mistakes actually help. They increase the talk, increase the interest, help to make the picture that appeals to the popular imagination, till what has seemed to be the eccentric action of a single individual spreads out in waves that envelop the whole earth.
Writing exactly forty years after the events just narrated—at a moment when women doctors are proving so vital an asset to the nation and to humanity at large—one realizes the difference it would have made to the whole world if Sophia Jex-Blake had been content to qualify abroad and to slip on to the Medical Register somehow, instead of throwing the gates wide open for all who were to follow her.
Reference has been made above to her love of poetry, and of all her poems there was none she was wont to recite more solemnly than Kipling’s Explorer: