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

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

The lecture was free, and proved a great success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And the heart.”

“And the heart,” he agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

It seemed better in the previous chapter to explain at once that, after a brief run of prosperity, the history of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was chequered by a long fight against heavy odds; but no one who visited the stirring bee-hive at Surgeon Square would have guessed at the struggle that underlay its cheerful aspect. And, fortunately, there were many strands in S. J.-B.’s life besides the struggle for her School. In a doctor’s experience there must always be much to interest and cheer, and S. J.-B.’s range was wider than that of the ordinary doctor. Editors were no less glad of her work than of old. In the autumn of 1887, she wrote to the Editor of the Nineteenth Century, offering him a paper on Medical Women which should supplement the one contributed by Mr. Stansfeld ten years before. Mr. Knowles replied immediately that he would be delighted to receive such a paper from her, and “the sooner the better.” The article duly appeared in November of that year.

At her little hospital she had a series of residents, some from the London School and some from her own, whom one can fairly describe as picked women,—keen and competent and loyal; and she enjoyed and appreciated these as they deserved. More and more, too, people sought her opinion and advice on every subject of real human interest. One doctor—a complete stranger—even wrote from far wilds to ask whether there was any lady studying in her School who she thought was likely to make him a suitable wife. He was coming home, but his leave was short, and he would be glad if she would save time by paving the way for him as far as possible. I am afraid the students never even heard of this opportunity!

How far she was from discouraging a true marriage may be gathered from the following letter to one of her former residents for whom she had designs in the way of more ambitious work, and who wrote in some trepidation to confess that she was engaged to be married:

That this was no new attitude on her part we learn from a letter written many years before to Miss Bertha Cordery. “You are quite right in thinking that I do not by any means as a matter of course congratulate people on their marriage, but when you say that ‘having met, no other result was possible,’ I think you express the essence of a good marriage with the terseness worthy of the distinguished historian.^[155]”

This seems the best place to say one word about the special interest S. J.-B. took in her Hindu students. The first of these, Annie Jagannadham, was a young woman of such fine and finished character that her early death, soon after her return to her native land, was a matter for infinite regret, but scarcely for surprise. When she qualified as a doctor, S. J.-B. wrote to the Spectator to point out the desirability of sending back Hindu women educated in England to minister to their own countrywomen; and her letter called forth a gratifying response from Mr. James Cropper of Ellergreen (who had been interested in S. J.-B.’s first application to the University of Edinburgh many years before) offering to found a scholarship for Hindu women at her school. This was accordingly done, and a series of Hindu students was the result. Differing from each other in many respects, they were alike in one thing, and that was a real gift for understanding and appreciating their Dean. They seemed to find the Mother side of her by a sort of instinct.

When Rukhmabai came to Edinburgh for her Final Professional Examination, she was S. J.-B.’s guest, and a strong mutual admiration and friendship was the result.

In accepting the chairmanship of the School, Dr. Balfour had made it almost a stipulation that S. J.-B. should personally undertake the teaching of Midwifery, and, in consequence of this, she was the first woman to be recognized as a lecturer in the Extra-Mural School. As a matter of fact, her special technical training was necessarily out of date. Dr. Balfour probably looked upon Midwifery mainly as a subject that successful physicians leave behind them, and did not realize that greater strides had been made in the teaching of this subject than in any other. However, S. J.-B. was a born teacher, as we know: she worked hard: and she had the able coöperation of the late Dr. Milne Murray, whose attitude towards her in this connection was one more of the splendid loyalties bound up in the story of her life.

And one cannot talk of loyalty without recalling a characteristic letter from Dr. Pechey, written when she received the news of S. J.-B.’s appointment:

The idea of having her old friend in Edinburgh dwelt in her mind nevertheless, and some time later—in May 1890—she wrote:

The feeling that her time of work was drawing to an end was intensified by the news of the death of her friend, Dr. Lucy Sewall. This was the last heavy bereavement she had to face, and she took it hard. To her friend, Mrs. Brander, her “eldest daughter,” she had written a month or two before the above correspondence with Dr. Pechey:

For the Englishwoman’s Review she wrote an account of this “strong and gentle soul,” quoting the lines Whittier had written about her ancestor. “I enclose the whole verse about Judge Sewall,” she says to the Editor, “in case you have room for it. It might almost word for word have been written of his far-away descendant.

S. J.-B.’s hands might be tired, but the eye on the bridge was as keen as ever. She had been aiming from the first at some sort of reinforcement from St. Andrews, and in 1888 Lord Lothian’s Bill had seemed to open a new door of hope.

The previous day she had written,

When the Bill was passed and Commissioners appointed, she laid before them a memorial in support of the desired aims, and in June 1891 she was summoned to give evidence in person. On June 28th she wrote to Miss Du Pre:

To another friend she had written a week earlier,

The whole matter, as is usual with such things, ran a leisurely course, for on April 27th, 1892, she writes again,

At this time the great hope—as so often in the past—lay in the direction of the University of St. Andrews, but the hope proved illusory once more. In reading the history, one feels again and again as if St. Andrews University had been surrounded by some strange magic circle, for it happened on numberless occasions that when everything seemed settled, and every difficulty had been laboriously overcome, some unsuspected link in the chain gave way, and endless exertion was rendered null and void. So it seems to have happened now, for in June 1894 we find S. J.-B. writing again to Miss Du Pre:

So the old warrior gathered herself together once more and made a last appeal to the University Court of her own Alma Mater to grant to other women the privilege that could never now be her own. She reminded them that in 1869 the same Court had conceded the principle of admitting women to graduation in medicine, that that principle had never been disallowed by them, and that the problem of its practical accomplishment had been under the consideration of the Court ever since.

It cannot be said that hope ran high even now. It had always been a saying among Scottish students that Edinburgh would be the last stronghold to yield; but the tide everywhere was on the turn. After full consideration of the subject, the Court rose nobly to the spirit of the resolution passed by their predecessors in 1869, and in October 1894 made public their determination to admit women forthwith to graduation in medicine.medicine.

The National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women, which had done such excellent service after its foundation in 1871, had for some years ceased to exist; “At the present time many of its members had passed away, and others were widely scattered, but it seemed desirable to those women who had always been members of it, and who were still resident in Edinburgh, that some congratulation should be offered by them to Dr. Jex-Blake, for the great victory that had been achieved by her in the opening of the degrees of the University of Edinburgh to women after a struggle extending over exactly five-and-twenty years.”^[157] So on Saturday, November 3rd, 1894, these honourable women met together and presented the following address:

Before leaving the subject of S. J.-B.’s active life in Edinburgh, it may be well to sum up some of her main characteristics as a doctor and as a citizen, though to a great extent these have already become evident.

First, was her great deftness in any kind of manipulation. It was interesting to see her outshine in this respect so many of the trig and dainty women who at one time or another, worked under her.

Second, was her readiness in emergency. The grass never grew under her feet. It is on record that she had finished some minor operation before her anaesthetist knew that she had begun. An amusing instance of her readiness occurs in a chance episode with her carriage-builder. It was not unusual for her to have little rubs with this man. He and his subordinates had difficulty in living up to her ideas of punctuality, and no doubt they considered her a bit of a nuisance.

One day she called to remonstrate about something and found “the Governor” in great distress from a splinter of steel which had become imbedded in his eye.

“I’ll take it out for you,” she said, and, turning to the men, added, “Bring a chair.”

The chair was placed by her direction in the best light obtainable, i.e. on the gallery surrounding the carriage yard, in full view of the men and horses below. She made the patient sit down, and, standing behind him, produced a surgical needle from her instrument case and with its curved convex edge deftly removed the splinter.

It was all done in the twinkling of an eye. Very simple, but very characteristic.

And it would have been awkward if she had failed.

Third, was her refusal to let a patient die. No doctor wishes to lose a case, but with S. J.-B. it was a matter of definite personal struggle.

One day in the comparatively early days of practice, she came in very late to lunch, having been urgently detained with a private patient. She was anxious about a case in her little hospital—a surgical case which had developed medical complications—and she sent a messenger down for news.

“Ceased to worry her with food!” One saw the summer lightnings on S. J.-B.’s forehead. “Tell Charles to bring the brougham round immediately.” Within half an hour the beef-tea was being administered by her own hand; and there was no more talk of “not worrying the patient with food.” She was worried until she not only rallied, but got her foot on to the ladder of a slow and sure recovery, a recovery that meant just everything to the husband and children who were anxiously awaiting the mother’s return to the little home.

As a neighbour and citizen S. J.-B. had certain outstanding qualités, which, with their corresponding défauts, have never tended to make the possessor of them universally popular. She considered it a public duty to uphold as far as lay in one person’s power the general standard of proper behaviour and efficiency in the community. She had no use for sluggards and shirkers. “Here’s the Doctor,—mind yersel’!” a cabman was heard to say when he and a gossiping mate had allowed their vehicles to sprawl right across the highroad just as the familiar pony-chaise came in sight. No postal service ever deteriorated in her vicinity. If lesser officials failed to listen, she appealed to the Postmaster-General, and she accomplished many minor reforms by which her neighbours profited as much as she did herself. Assuredly she was no grumbler, but she considered that those who make it their aim to slip smoothly through life, leaving to others all the irksome work of protesting, are—to say the least—acting an unheroic part. She agreed that all things come to him who waits,—and come through the exertions of those who have not been content merely to wait. The callow upstart official was apt to fare badly at her hands, but if the official happened to be an elderly woman at—say—some isolated country post office, one saw S. J.-B. at her best. She would steer the way gently and patiently through some simple transaction that seemed involved enough in those wilds; and, if she was met by a flash of interest and intelligence, her appreciation was great. “Why we’ll make you Postmaster-General!” she has been heard to say, leaving a beaming face behind her as she gathered up the reins and drove away,—a visitant indeed from another world.

All through the years of work and conflict, S. J.-B. had looked forward to her “Sabbatical year,” when, with a clear conscience, she could retire from active life, and share with others the rest and seclusion she longed for. As early as 1892 she had written to a cousin in New Zealand about a visit from her brother, who had been examining at Fettes:

Some months later she seems to have written in the same vein to the old aunt in Norfolk, for Mrs. Gunton replies in a holograph letter of four beautifully-written pages:

How difficult to find any ground of comparison between those two lives, grown on the same stock, the one of 52 and the other of 93!

The opening of the University degrees to women cleared the ground a good deal, but there were still three great difficulties in the way of retirement. The first was the Hospital. S. J.-B. was aware, as she had written to Dr. Pechey that it “never would develop in her tired hands,” but before passing it over to her juniors, she was anxious to use her name and influence for all they were worth in the way of raising money to constitute a small endowment, and justify building, or at least a removal to larger premises.premises. “The one thing that I do long for still,” she wrote, “is to see a thoroughly good Women’s Hospital officered by women established in Edinburgh.”

On the whole it was hard work. She wrote many letters in vain, but, little by little, she gathered a few thousands: and there were, as usual, some pleasant surprises by the way. Her old friend, Mrs. Arthur, when asked for £100, promptly responded with a cheque for £500, and some of those who gave little gave with a few words of gratitude and appreciation that lifted the gift quite out of the region of shillings and pounds.

A greater obstacle, perhaps, than the Hospital was the sheer difficulty of winding up and getting away. S. J.-B. had begun life as an early Victorian girl with an exceptionally strong hereditary tendency to store and treasure all sorts of things great and small. Almost in the twinkling of an eye she became a modern woman with a correspondence that ran to dozens—sometimes hundreds—of letters in a day,—a modern woman with no leisure at all for the always distasteful work of weeding out and destroying. She was always giving, but she never seemed to give away the things of which she would be well rid. Moreover she always did things on a massive, great-spirited scale. If a number of copies of any document were wanted, it was better to get it printed,—and, if you were getting it printed, it was safer and cheaper to get 500 or 1000 copies while the type was up. You never knew how important that particular document might become. If any article was nearly worn out, buy a new one by all means,—but keep the old one too in case the new one should break down.

And so it came about that in her roomy old house, with its spacious attics and cellars, things were stored and stacked and forgotten until their volume was almost incredible to those who had not seen it.

And finally there was the great question where to settle. She never lost her love for Edinburgh, and she was often tempted to choose a house on the outskirts. On the other hand, she had always dreamed of growing figs and peaches on a sunny south wall in her beloved native county of Sussex: and how was she to find just the right house in Sussex? So the time slipped away, and she had one illness after another, and it often seemed to those nearest her as if the Sabbatical year would be spent on the other Side of the River.

She took holidays more and more frequently, however, and rejoiced increasingly in the work of those who took her place. “My daughters,” “my girls,” “my young doctors,”—how proudly she used to say it! Her face the day five of them were “capped” at the University was a thing to be seen. And if she was an absolutely un-self-sparing worker, she knew better than most how to make holiday; indeed her holidays were as characteristic as everything else she did and was. She hated publicity, hated the noise and bustle of trains, so a driving-tour was her ideal of happiness and refreshment. Her chaise had been specially built for the purpose, with space in front of the dash-board to accommodate two small valises, abundant room under the seats, and other incidental conveniences that one only discovered by degrees. Little by little she had made a fine art of her preparations. The list of compact necessaries was always at hand, and the so-called “work-box” alone contained in a condensed form resources for emergencies of all descriptions. The groom had his own kit behind, and woe betide him if his tools were not at hand when a shoe came loose or a nut needed screwing up.

The strain of packing was apt to be considerable for everyone concerned, and it lasted for the first mile or two of the journey. Then gradually it melted away. She would draw a deep breath and give herself up to the delightful sense of freedom. “Oh, isn’t it good to be away!” “It seemed yesterday as if we never should get off.”

She always elected to go for the first night or two, if possible, to an inn she knew. She asked so little, but it had to be just the particular little that she wanted. No “much” could take the place of that.

“Thank you, that is very nice,” she would say breezily, after surveying the rooms in some unknown inn where she hoped to stay for more than a night. “Now will you open the windows, and give us both some more towels and one or two little tables, and take away the ornaments in the sitting-room. We want room for our books.”

Sometimes the people were aghast, but much, much more often they entered into the spirit of the thing and gave her just what she wanted. She had a great knack of carrying them with her. She was so easy-going in most ways, “because of course,” as she used to explain, “one is not responsible for inn servants as one is for one’s own.” And some few inns became to her a real haven of refuge,—Rumbling Bridge, under old Mrs. Macara; Fortingal, in the old days, under Mr. and Mrs. Menzies; and—above all latterly—(under Mrs. Beattie), her beloved Gordon Arms at Yarrow where she and Miss Du Pre had perforce taken refuge one day in a storm, little thinking what a sanctuary it was often to prove.