Chapter VII The Sabbatical Year
It was that winter at Bordighera that gave her strength and energy for the final uprooting. The autumn of 1898-99 was spent on a driving tour of 1100 miles through the S.E. counties of England in search of a suitable house. She set about the search in her usual business-like way,—pasting into a book all the likely houses from the agents’ lists, rejecting at a sweep all within ten miles of London, all above or below a certain price and acreage, all that fell short of the desired level above the sea, all that were in a town, or that advertised their proximity to a railway station. The tour was then planned to include as many as possible of those that remained.
There were a few unusual disqualifications. One house that attracted her belonged to the Rector of the parish, who refused to let to a Roman Catholic or a dissenter, and, although S. J.-B. was neither, she did not wish to be subjected to any test. Another house—more strangely still—was only to be let to someone who would carry on the evangelistic meetings in an out-building. “What if I were to take the house and preach Buddhism?” she said.
Finally she decided on the house which she afterwards named Windydene, near the village of Mark Cross, on the Forest Ridge of Sussex, some five or six miles south of Tunbridge Wells. “It is neither a new or an old house,” she wrote to her friend, Miss Keily,—“built probably some 50 years ago,—very comfortable and airy, and with pleasant garden and shrubberies, a good kitchen garden (much neglected of late) and about 8 acres for pasture and hay.”
Having put various negotiations and alterations in train, she returned to Edinburgh for the final winding-up.
And there was much in those last months that lingered pleasantly in her memory. In June 1898 the British Medical Association had met in Edinburgh, and S. J.-B., like most other doctors, had kept open house. Some thirty medical women were present at the meeting, and, before it broke up, Dr. Jane Walker organized a dinner under the presidency of the old Edinburgh pioneer. Mrs. Garrett Anderson and Mrs. Scharlieb were among the guests. As always, S. J.-B. spoke very happily, and a number of those present got for the first time something like a just impression of her personality.
Early in 1899 a Farewell Reception was given in her honour by the Committee of her Hospital, and some happy inspiration made the occasion not only a social success, but a gathering of unique interest. The majority of the large company were in evening dress, but the Dispensary patients were encouraged to look upon the Reception as their affair too, and they came in what dress they had. Moreover, it was no mere “meeting,” it was a real “party,” with refreshments galore in a side room, and no compulsion to listen to more speeches than one was in a mood for. The Marchioness of Bute, President of the Hospital, who was ill, was represented by one of the Vice-Presidents, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson. Lady Victoria Campbell made a point of being present, as did the Countess of Moray, and many patients, colleagues and allies of all sorts.
It was Professor Masson who moved the resolution of the evening:
“That this company, remembering all that has been done by Dr. Jex-Blake so preëminently for the medical education of women, and for the opening up of the medical profession to women, both here and elsewhere, take this opportunity of congratulating her on the present evidence of the success everywhere of the cause which owes so much to her powerful initiation and persevering advocacy; and regrets that the occasion should also be one of farewell.”
Dr. Balfour felt inclined, he said, to quote the words of the old song:
“Dost thou remember, comrade old and hoary,
The days we fought and conquered side by side
On fields of battle, famous now in story?”
He indicated apologetically that the words were not wholly appropriate, but S. J.-B. speedily set his mind at rest on that score. She felt old and hoary enough.
Dr. Peel Ritchie recalled how he had begun to help the women students simply from love of fair play, with no enthusiasm at all for the cause, but how he had been gradually worked up to a warmer feeling and interest; and Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Sibbald confessed that he had taken no part in the old conflict at all; but acknowledged gladly that his original dislike to the whole thing had gradually given way as he had watched the life of the protagonist, with increasing admiration, appreciation and....”
At that fine silence he left it.
A bouquet of roses was presented by Dr. Jessie Macgregor, one of the most brilliant of S. J.-B.’s students; and a basket of flowers by Winifred Beilby, daughter of a lady who had been a member of Committee for many years, and a patient from the first.
Yes, it was a great send-off, and S. J.-B. was simple-hearted enough to enjoy it all like a child.
There were other tokens of recognition too,—among them a presentation from a great number of women doctors, and another from the Dispensary patients.
There is no doubt that Dr. Sibbald voiced the opinion of many in his tribute to S. J.-B. For years she had lived among the Edinburgh people, driving about in her quiet brougham or unpretentious pony-chaise, and retiring to the high-walled garden. In a way they could not but get to know her. They might like or dislike her, but she went on her way, doing her work absolutely without ostentation, welcoming publicity when it seemed likely to forward her aims or the welfare of the community, shunning it absolutely as a matter of private taste.
With most of these whose opinion was worth having, opposition and dislike were simply worn down. She was impulsive, she made mistakes and would do so to the end of her life: her naturally hasty temper and imperious disposition had been chastened indeed, but the chastening fire had been far too fierce to produce perfection. She held out at times about trifles,—failed to see that they were trifles—and at times she terrified people more than she knew. Above all she cared nothing for the praise and blame of any but those whom she respected or loved. Of her indeed it might be said that she heard the beat of a different drummer. But there was another side to the picture after all. Many of those who regretted and criticised details were yet forced to bow before the big transparent honesty, the fine unflinching consistency, of her life.
“Yes, it was simply greatness.
There was nothing else I could say,
I had hedged my path more straitly,
But [hers] was the kinglier way.”
It remains only to give some picture of S. J.-B.’s life in retirement. Dr. Clouston had shaken his head when he heard what she proposed to do. It was a great risk to give up a life packed with work and interest for one of leisure.
“I am not going to be idle,” she had said. “I am going to farm.”
“Then you’ll lose a lot of money.”
“I can’t lose much on ten acres.”
“Ah!” He seemed to indicate that ten acres was not enough; but as a matter of fact S. J.-B. reaped now all the advantage of that love of detail which had so often proved a snare. “Windydene” had been unoccupied and more or less neglected for some time, so there was abundant scope for an enterprising “Squire.” And the situation was as choice as even the county of Sussex can provide. From the terrace one looked right across to the South Downs, and even Fairlight was supposed to be visible on a clear day. The garden had been ideally planned on ground that fell away rather steeply to the south. It had spacious lawns cunningly planted, some of the trees being of real value and beauty.
Beyond the lawns were shady paths and all sort of unexpected openings and surprises; and beyond these again were the meadows hedged with blackberries, and carpeted in spring with cowslip and ladies’ smock. From the meadows one passed through to the woods, and so to the whole billowy stretch of the Weald, with its varied foliage, its blue lights and chasing shadows, its lakes of white mist in the still summer mornings.
S. J.-B. had seen the place first in November. She actually took possession in May, when the red chestnuts were in bloom and the woods full of bluebells.
“‘The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places’,” she said, “‘I have a goodly heritage’;” and the words were constantly on her lips till the end. Kipling’s “Sussex by the Sea” might have been written for her, so gratefully did she take possession of it.
“Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
Yea, Sussex by the sea!”
Her first care was to institute a fruit garden, building a south wall and planting vines, figs, peaches, nectarines and apricots. In the course of a few years her strawberries in particular had acquired quite a reputation.
She started a dairy too, and supervised it herself. It was a real joy to her to have cows in the paddock and to produce her own cream and butter. The hay-making and the harvest supper were great events in the year.
But long before she had got as far as this—before the house was more than tolerably straight after the great flitting—she was inviting guests to share the joys of the spring and summer. All through the later years of her life she had the intimate daily companionship she prized so generously, but her doors stood open always as of old. “Windydene is a Mecca,” one of the younger medical women said, and there were those to whom it was a Mecca and something more. From S. J.-B.’s old fellow-students down to some unknown girl graduate, they came from all parts of the world. We have seen what Dr. Lillie Saville thought of life at Windydene, and indeed Lady Jenkinson’s “soul and body, especially soul” often finds an echo. A woman doctor who met S. J.-B. first at that British Medical Association dinner in Edinburgh writes years later:
“Thinking it over, I see that the best new influence that came into my life during the last seven years was the Doctor’s young fresh interest, her enthusiasm, her breadth of mind, her spiritual force and faith, and her strong original wisdom.”
But it was not only women doctors who came. Literary folk were guests too, and, above all, the old friends, whatever they had chanced to become. Miss Du Pre, Lady Jenkinson, Miss Catharine Eliott-Lockhart, Miss E. Cordery, Mrs. Gardiner, Mr. James Cordery, Mr. Phipson and Dr. Pechey Phipson, Mrs. (Dr.) Mears, and many others. The arrival of Dr. Agnes M‘Laren from her season’s practice on the Riviera was one of the events of the early summer; she always came by Newhaven and so to Crowborough, where S. J.-B. faithfully awaited her. A still earlier event in the year was the arrival of Miss Caroline Jex-Blake, “when the primroses were out,” and her joy in the meadows and woods was a thing that only those who knew her could conceive.
Little enough entertainment in the ordinary sense was offered to the guests at any time. Breakfast in bed was an unfailing institution for tired workers, and most of the guests were tired workers. There was fruit and cream to heart’s content and beyond it; there were long leisurely drives uphill and down dale through that beautiful country,158—plenty of chess for those who were worthy of chess,—unforgettable evenings round the study fire; and at all other times—stated meals apart—an almost unlimited choice of books,—and liberty to do as one pleased.
S. J.-B. used to say that her one extravagance at Windydene was journals and books. She had always been a book buyer, and books were more essential than ever now. New shelves had to be put up every year or so. Her collection of recent novels alone induced a well-known publisher to say that she ought to have a testimonial from authors and publishers. There was a certain amount of practical benevolence in this. In Edinburgh she had often said that an important part of her treatment of patients was the lending of suitable novels, and at Windydene she often had twenty or thirty books out at a time. Her taste was catholic in the extreme, but she specially appreciated among others Peter Ibbetson, San Celestino and Out of Due Time; and—like so many distinguished people—she keenly enjoyed detective stories, especially for reading in the watches of the night.
She had lost none of her love of poetry. The “poetry book-case” had an honoured place as of old; but, as she sat in her big chair by the fire, she had a revolving stand filled with special favourites within reach of her right hand, and, on her left (in the angle of the chimney-piece) a tiny set of shelves brought from the corresponding nook in her Edinburgh consulting room, contained her Mother’s Bible and a few other chosen friends.
But the range of her purchases during those later years was very wide: almost at random one recalls Blomefield’s Norfolk, all Father Tyrrell’s works, a whole library of books on social problems,—industry, poverty, labour, etc.—and a fine copy of The Book of the Dead.
She retained her old interest in what one may call the polemics of religion, and this was intensified by a delightful and unexpected friendship of those later days.
She had not been many weeks in Mark Cross before some mutual friend suggested that she might care to know the Roman Catholic priest—a man, as it chanced, of scholarship and culture—following up the suggestion with the loan of a book which the priest had published some years before.159 A few days later S. J.-B. wrote the following letter:
“June 15th [1899].
Dear Sir,
I have been reading your book on Reunion with very great sympathy and admiration; and, if you care to call on an elderly woman who is not of your creed, I should be very glad to have the honour of making your acquaintance.
I expect to be at home tomorrow afternoon, or could fix any day except Monday, next week, if more convenient to you.
Yours truly,
Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D.
Rev. Father Duggan.”
It did not strike the looker-on as a specially likely combination, but it was the unlikely thing that happened. The Revd. Father Duggan became one of the most welcome guests at Windydene. He and his dog, Caesar, used to drop in almost every Sunday afternoon for strawberries on the lawn or tea round the study fire. I don’t pretend that Caesar took any interest in the strawberries—possible rabbits were a more absorbing subject—but he did enjoy his bowl of tea, especially when a lump of sugar remained at the bottom as a bonne bouche. He was the centre of interest when his turn came, and, when the anticipated “crunch” was heard, the general laugh of sympathy never failed. They were just happy children together,—the Dog, the Reverend Father and the old Pioneer, and now the world is the poorer for the loss of all three.
There were great talks on those Sunday afternoons; it was no uncommon thing to see three versions of the Bible and half a dozen volumes of the Encyclopaedia lying about at the end to witness to the interest of the discussion. There was much borrowing and lending of books,—and no obvious change of view on the part of anyone except in the direction of increased tolerance and brotherly kindness. A very simple anecdote will give as good an idea as any of the nature of the friendship.
Father Duggan had been the lender of Canon Cheyne’s Commentary on the Psalms, which he had just reviewed for a daily paper.
“I won’t pretend that I read the whole of it,” said S. J.-B. in returning the volumes. “In fact”—with a sparkle of mischief,—“I noticed when it came that only about a quarter of the leaves were cut.”
“Yes,” he admitted tranquilly. “I did think of cutting a few more before sending it up to you,—but I didn’t.”
“Ah, no!” she said. “You were an honest man.”
She was on excellent terms, too, with the local doctors: they looked forward to a chat when they met her in the country lanes, and, if, when she left Edinburgh, there had been any hatchet left to bury, their boyish camaraderie would soon have compelled her to bury it. “I confess I had a prejudice against women doctors,” one of them said after her death, “but she disarmed me completely.”
The life at Windydene was not unbroken. The clay soil in that wooded garden was not conducive to the health of a rheumatic person like S. J.-B., so several brief winters were spent at various places on the Riviera, and one in Portugal, mainly in the Sacred Forest at Bussaco. At Carqueiranne in Provence one of the editors of the Matin was a fellow guest, and he proved another unexpected comrade. It must have been a matter of some surprise to him to meet in that unlikely place, an elderly English gentlewoman with a grasp of the range of European politics and a facility for discussing it in excellent French.
It was at Carqueiranne that she and the intimate friend of those days met Mr. Frederic Myers and Professor William James, and here too there was a pleasant partie carrée for some days with Professor and Mrs. Gardiner who were on a cycling tour in the south of France. Professor Gardiner had several times been S. J.-B.’s guest in Edinburgh, when his researches brought him north to inspect some unique document among the archives there, and it was a pleasant change to meet when both were in purely holiday mood.
In the late Autumn of 1909—in spite of increasing physical disqualifications—she made a last driving tour to her beloved Yarrow.
It is needless to say that she never lost her interest in the happenings of the world. She had latterly a profound distrust of Germany, and was an eager reader of the articles on this subject in the National Review. The Riddle of the Sands was a novel that she helped to circulate widely. Her name appeared pretty frequently in the correspondence columns of the Times, sometimes in connection with Woman Suffrage, more often in unavailing protest against the endless “joy-riding”—degenerating into the sheer lawlessness of the “road-hog”—that was making the loveliest English lanes a nightmare of dust and danger.
It was to the Times, too, that she sent her last tribute to the most heroic of her Edinburgh friends in the old days of the “fight.”
“Sir,—It seems impossible to let the grave close over the mortal remains of Professor Masson without one word of heartfelt gratitude from those whom he befriended so nobly in 1869 and the following years. Our struggle with the University was hard enough as it was, but without his help and that of half a dozen other men it would have been impracticable. I feel that it is really quite impossible to do justice to the chivalry, the unselfishness, the constant readiness to espouse the unpopular cause, and to fight in its foremost ranks, which characterized Professor Masson, and it would take far too much of your space to say even a fraction of what could be said of the aid he gave us in that great battle.
But I beg you at least to allow me to say that those so deeply indebted to him will never forget him, but hold his memory in love and reverence as long as they live.
Yours obediently,
Sophia Jex-Blake.
Windydene, Mark Cross, Sussex, Oct. 10 [1907].”
The suffrage movement was always near her heart, though she never grew restless or impatient over the long delay. She never approved of tax-resistance, and militant methods made her uneasy, though she admitted that they had given the cause a prominence that nothing else could have done. Looking back in 1879 on her own fight she had been able to say, “We seemed led all the way; certainly our aim was straight at the end [before us], but ‘highly and holily’ too. I never minded dirt of others’ throwing, but I don’t think I ever smirched my own conscience.” It was in her favour that the Editor of the Spectator broke through his stern rule of excluding all letters advocating the extension of the franchise to women. “Our respect for so eminent a lady makes it a pleasure to publish Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake’s letter.”
It was this question of the suffrage, too, as we shall see, that brought her for the last time into touch with Octavia Hill.
S. J.-B.’s outer circle had never suspected her of being “religious,” and even by the fireside she spoke less perhaps, rather than more, on the subject as time went on; but the old quotations kept flashing up to witness to the fire beneath. She was always profoundly interested in any genuine profession of faith, any real conversion or perversion. Several of her friends joined the Church of Rome in those later years, and she was one to whom they always felt the need of justifying themselves. They felt sure of an underlying sympathy, however she might disapprove. Often, of course, she declined to take the matter too seriously. To an old student she wrote:
“I am not at all shocked at your Sunday programme, but I must say I am amused at your going to a dissenting chapel.”
And again:
“I don’t trouble myself much about who goes ‘over to Rome’ and who does not. After all for each one,—‘To his own Master he stands or falls,’ and what we must ask of each is to act to the best of his lights.
But I think ‘subterfuging’ implies dim lights.”
Her own attitude grew steadily simpler, enriching the vital elements of her Mother’s creed with the wisdom and experience of her own life. As time went on she disliked increasingly to be classed with those whose attitude towards religion is one of indifference. Even before she left Edinburgh she had written to an old school friend, in acknowledgement of a book by another schoolfellow:
“To speak plainly then it strikes me as crude and superficial,—as the work of a person who has caught up passwords rather than of one who has struggled through the conflict of thought personally. It reminds me forcibly of the old proverb, ‘Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat.’ The deeper we go into problems, whether social or religious, the less possible it seems to me to pronounce about them offhand.
In theology you would, I suppose, rank me among the Agnostics, as I feel very strongly how little we know on such subjects, and that the truly scientific aspect of mind is one of suspension of judgment; but I have no sympathy at all with C.’s attacks on Christianity and the alleged motives of its advocates, and still less with her estimate of the character of Christ.
The programme of Socialism strikes me (so far as I understand it) as unworkable, because it ignores a great many of the facts of human nature; and I am sure you are right in thinking that the true path of progress lies in gradual improvement, and gradual removal of unjust restrictions, rather than in sudden violence and revolution.”
To a much more intimate friend she had written about the same time:
“Yes, I think —— is what I should call an Agnostic, but perhaps you from lordly heights of orthodoxy don’t appreciate that that differs ’toto caelo’ from an atheist; and that it is one of the most offensive of errors,—and one frequently made from culpable carelessness,—to substitute the one for the other.”
Her appreciation of the Bible increased—and it had always been an exceptional appreciation;—but there are two quotations that stand out in one’s memory as belonging to her in a special sense. She always appropriated to herself with great fervour the prayer of Agur:—“Two things have I required of thee...: Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.”
And more than once, after quoting the words from Isaiah:—“Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones,” she added almost under her breath,
“I am not sure that that is not the finest thing in the whole Bible.”
But while she was one of those to whom the Old Testament makes perhaps a special appeal, it was not by accident that at the time of her death, and for years previously, the words were fixed above the mantelpiece, both in her study and in her bedroom,—“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
Some years before leaving Edinburgh, S. J.-B. had a heart attack which caused Dr. Balfour grave uneasiness, and, although she rallied in the course of a week, similar attacks kept recurring at considerable intervals. On one occasion at Windydene she was unconscious for several hours, and finally “came out of blackness” to ask with great calmness, “Well, what do you suppose has happened?”
Within a week of this attack she started for the Riviera.
It is probable that she never fully realized the seriousness of these cardiac signs and symptoms; but, in one way or another, death knocked at her door pretty frequently during those later years.
In 1901-2, she suffered from a mysterious and anomalous “growth,” for which a leading London surgeon refused to operate on the ground that she was a bad subject. She was not sorry for the refusal, but the enemy grew with appalling rapidity, and it became increasingly clear that something would have to be done. All through the period of uncertainty she went on with her life absolutely as usual. “I did wake up one night in a horror of great darkness,” she confessed, “wondering what was going to happen; but very soon Whittier’s words came into my mind:
“I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies....
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.”
And then I just turned over on the other side and went to sleep again.”
“How thankful we should be,” she said on another occasion, “that we don’t know what is before us. Life is hard enough, it would be much harder if we knew.”
When a friend remarked on her courage, she said,—and this was a remark repeated many times before the end of her life,—“No, no. I have been brave sometimes in my life, but not now. There is nothing to be brave about now.”
In response one day to a warmer expression of admiration, she almost cried out in protest,—“Oh!... God be merciful to me a sinner. That is what one feels more and more.” Then, after a pause:
“‘Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckoned,
And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace—
I find myself by hands familiar beckoned
Unto my fitting place.’”
Another day she said, “My life here will not be much longer, but I feel that I have not reached the end. I have learnt a great deal, and I have a great deal still to learn. Unless one has absolutely refused to learn, one must get the chance to learn more.”
Her friend quoted Thring. “My creed is life. Blessed is life the King, etc.”
“Ah,” she said, “I don’t know that it will be better than this life, but it will give us the chance to learn fresh things.”
It was on that occasion that she looked death in the face while still in full possession of her powers—“‘I laid me down with a will,’” she said—; but for the moment the sacrifice was not required of her. When the malady reached a point at which surgical interference was at worst a necessary palliative, she proposed to ask two of her own old students to come and undertake an operation. It was represented to her that it was scarcely fair to put so great a responsibility on them,160 so she wrote to her friend, Mr. Cathcart of Edinburgh, asking him to come and undertake the case. He came at once, of course, and the operation proved a triumphant success.161
So life was given back to her just as she had laid it down, and the remaining years were in some respects the happiest and most peaceful she had known. She renewed her youth, though in truth she had never grown old, and lived more than ever in the life of her “girls.” She had always said, “Not me, but us.” Now more and more the “us” came into the centre of her scheme of life. Perhaps her last ambition was that some British University should give her its honorary degree, but her friends only realized this when she had already laid the ambition down. “I shall never have a University hood,” she said once or twice quite simply. All the more she enjoyed the glories of the young women doctors who were coming on. She listened to their accounts of what they had learned and of what they had done with an admiration that was nothing short of poignant in its simplicity. Her own share in the whole thing simply dropped out. At most she would say when some gifted visitor was gone, “Wonderful the work she is doing! Well, I did help a little bit once upon a time, didn’t I?”
It was when one of her old girls seemed face to face for the first time with that most bitter disappointment in a doctor’s experience,—the loss of a patient for whose life one has fought with repeated recrudescence of hope in the teeth of despair,—that S. J.-B. wrote one of her last letters:
“Windydene,
7 p.m. March 19th. 1911.
Dear Child,
I am so sorry for you, and I think of you so much! It is an experience that has to come to all of us who live in our work,—and we must believe ‘we shall see in heaven why it could not be otherwise.’
Meanwhile ‘the Healer by Gennesaret shall walk thy rounds with thee.’
When it is all over,—for I suppose that is now the end,—I think you should come down here for a few perfectly quiet days. We shall be so glad to have you.
Yours sincerely,
S. J.-B.”
There was, of course, one visitor whom she would fain have welcomed to her “pleasant places.” She had followed Octavia Hill’s life with unfailing interest, and had subscribed to the Derwentwater scheme, and to other of Miss Hill’s beneficent works. In July or August 1910 a letter opposing the extension of the suffrage to women appeared in the Times above the signature of Octavia Hill. S. J.-B. replied to the letter, regretting that Miss Hill should have “given the support of her honoured name” to the negative side of the controversy. The Times did not often refuse a communication from S. J.-B., but on this occasion her letter was not inserted. Perhaps the trifling episode called up memories too insistent to be stilled, for a day or two later she wrote to her old friend:
“August 5th. 1910.
Windydene, Mark Cross, Sussex.
Dear,
I wrote enclosed mainly as an answer to yours in the Times, and as it has been sent back to me, crowded out, I send it to you,—to show you another old woman’s point of view.
I am rheumatic and lame now, and cannot go about much, but I wish you would come down and spend two or three days with me here on the Sussex hills, and we would thrash out this Suffrage question—surely one of us ought to be able to convince the other!
And I should like to see you again!
Yours sincerely,
S. Jex-Blake.
I grieved greatly with you in your loss in June.”162
Miss Octavia Hill had allowed herself no “sabbatical year,” and she was flagging in harness. Her life had been spent in unremitting service of her fellow men. She answered her old friend’s letter, but she could not respond. One has no difficulty in understanding her attitude now. A conventional meeting would have been useless, and anything else would have involved a greater upheaval than most people are willing to face as life goes on.
And it well may be that she had acted wisely all along. As Mrs. Jex-Blake had said many years before with that strange prevision that is given sometimes to the pure in heart,—“God has two great works,—one for her, one for you.”
Those two great works could never have been combined.
And, indeed, no one with a disposition like S. J.-B.’s can go through life without losing friends. She might have said with St. Teresa,—“For one thing, the devil sometimes fills me with such a harsh and cruel temper; such a spirit of anger and hostility at some people, that I could eat them up and annihilate them.” But, as in the case of St. Teresa, the obverse side of the medal was a capacity for loving that can seldom have been surpassed in our human nature. “Went not my heart with thee...?” she used to say: and it did,—not only with those nearest to her, but with all who appealed to her mother-heart. The comforting letter was written, in spite of all fatigue and inconvenience, at the earliest possible moment: the box of flowers, the grapes, the wine, the cheque, the open hospitable doors,—all seemed messengers waiting for their turn, like the swift-heeled servants of the Fairy Queen.
No appeal ever came to her that she ignored. The Charity Organisation Society was familiar with her name; and great sometimes was her disappointment when those she wanted to help were pronounced hopeless or unworthy. Nothing that she loved ever grew old. Her friends, her horses,—even the purely material things to which she was attached—grew more beautiful in her eyes as their market value decreased. She always parted deliberately with the flowers that had stood by her hand. No one was ever allowed to throw them away as a matter of routine, and often she would raise them to her lips before putting them in the fire.
St. Teresa’s love no doubt was a more transcendent thing. It was her lot to live in an age of faith. S. J.-B. often quoted Whittier’s Autograph:
“If of the Law’s stone table,
To hold he scarce was able
The first great precept fast,
He kept for man the last.
Through mortal lapse and dulness
What lacks the Eternal Fulness,
If still our weakness can
Love Him in loving man?”
There are those of whom Teresa herself said:
“They may have more merit in His eyes than their more favoured neighbours, because their obedience and their faith and their love have cost them more. Their Lord deals with them as with strong and valiant men, appointing them travail and trouble here, that they may fight for Him the good fight of faith, and only come in for the prize at the end.”
No portrait gives any adequate idea of Sophia Jex-Blake. Someone who saw her first in 1886 writes:
“Although too stout in figure, she had a fine commanding presence, and one was struck at once by the exceeding comeliness of her face. It was strong, wise and benevolent, capable of an extraordinary range of expression. The brow was ideally shaped, broad and serene in repose, though always liable to the summer lightnings that one half admired, half dreaded. Her hair was growing white, but the eyebrows remained black till the end, and the eyes, both by nature and by the long discipline of life, were extraordinarily fine and expressive.”
It was twenty years later than this that a girl friend said,—“She has the look of one ‘following fearlessly’.” Throughout life, the tendency to sadness of expression was wholly contradicted by her smile; her eyes very readily bubbled over with merriment; as some reporter had said in the days of the fight, “With those dimples she must be good-natured.” When an old servant was shown the final portrait in this volume, she said, “But I want her to look up at me and laugh as she used to do!”
One does not wish to dwell on the history of the last few months. From the physical point of view it is a familiar story. One by one every medicament lost its efficacy: the failing heart ceased to invigorate one organ after another. But the strong and disciplined will held the shattered tabernacle together. Sometimes acute symptoms forced her to stay in bed for a day or two, but she always struggled on to her feet again at the earliest possible moment and went for the daily drive through her beloved lanes and woods. True that towards the end she noticed these less and less,—drowsed most of the way; but, if there was occasion to rouse herself and speak to anyone, she did so almost as of old.
“The worst of lying awake at night,” she used to say whimsically, “is that one realizes all the mistakes one has made in one’s life.” It was not even lying awake sometimes: it was a weary sitting up or lying down as each position in turn became intolerable. And often, after only three minutes’ unconsciousness, she would exclaim in something like the old happy voice, “I have had such a lovely sleep!”
Almost to the last day she repeated bits of her favourite poems and psalms,—and nothing gave her so much pleasure as to plan holidays for those who still had a day’s work before them. She was infinitely mindful of those who tended her. Almost her last words were,—“Now do go and have a good rest.”
And so the end came,—suddenly but not unexpectedly. She sat down one day more tired than usual—it was the 7th January, 1912—stretched herself back, and rendered up her soul to God who gave it.
A great wave of feeling arose in the village and round about when it was known that the familiar figure of the old warrior would no more be seen in her Sussex lanes. Perplexed at first, her neighbours of all classes had come in a measure to understand her, to be proud of her,—some of them to love her. With one or two, indeed, she had formed a warm and intimate friendship. There was every token of respectful sympathy and mourning when the little procession made its way to Rotherfield Church.163
And that wave of feeling went out over the whole world. Messages and tributes of appreciation and regret poured steadily in. The most beautiful and adequate was the paragraph in the Pall Mall Gazette:
“The woman as Happy Warrior has passed away with the death in her Sussex home of Sophia Jex-Blake. There is scarcely an attribute of the great figure in Wordsworth’s poem which she did not possess, with the crowning added happiness of seeing her fame as a noble and successful pioneer in a great movement finally established. She it was, more than anyone else, who compelled the gates of the medical profession to be opened to women. Through years of hostility and obloquy she never lost heart in her Cause; and, meeting violence with reason and coarseness with dignity, she won at last. Her longest and bitterest fight was with the University of Edinburgh; and, later, when Parliament had recognized the right of women to be doctors, it was in that city that she practised for twenty-one years. Since the death of Florence Nightingale no woman has died of whom more truly may it be written, Bene actæ vitæ recordatio jucundissima est.
But the reader may find a special propriety in a very simple resolution passed a few days later in an Over Seas dominion:
“That the members of the University Women’s Club of Toronto do place on record their deep sense of the great influence and noble life of Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake. Now that her distinguished career has closed, they feel that she was the helper of all University women,—and they love her for many reasons.”
The End