The life of Sophia Jex-Blake / by Margaret Todd (Graham Travers).

  • Margaret Todd
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The life of Sophia Jex-Blake / by Margaret Todd (Graham Travers). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Damltless, heart, remember his first act of forbearance was noted as a step towards heaven. Beloved child ! do I beseech you remember the duty of a child, be gentle and tender to your dear Parents, then the Lord will love you, and some day the Lion will give place to the Lamb in your bosom. Dear Mary Bayly’s has turned to whooping- cough. I hope yours is better. Until I find where to send her, I cannot leave home. God’s will be done.” For a year and a half Sophy remained under this lady’s care, and then one or two equally unsuccessful experiments were made. Meanwhile Mrs. Jex-Blake remained so ailing that it was not possible for her to have the child at home for the long vacation, and a “ dear kind ” lady invites the refractory young person to visit her for part of the time. Mr. Jex-Blake writes to inform Sophy of the fact, and adds, “ Now have we not in this great cause of thankfulness to our kind God and Father who never forgets us ? ” This was perhaps asking a little too much of the homesick child. The truth is that the parents at this time were not growing younger (as many parents do), and certainly they were growing more staid and set in their ways. It was becoming increasingly difficult to them to adapt themselves to this riotous child. “ Avoid excitement which is your great enemy,” writes her Father, unaware perhaps that his own weakness was a tendency to be rather too fussy and precise. With hearts full of love they were demanding of her a standard of excellence which for her was wholly artificial, and in the half-hearted, or at least intermittent, effort to attain it, she fell in the breach. And parents and child were not the only factors in the difficult problem of home life. So long as Sophy could by any stretch of charity be reckoned a child, it was comparatively easy for her brother and sister to put up with her volcanic ways. But from a schoolgirl one expects some conformity to recognized standards, and Sophy’s elder sister had been such a pattern in this respect that the con¬ trast was necessarily acute. “ I really don’t think you would enjoy [a visit from] Carry much at school even if we could spare her,” Mrs. Jex-Blake writes in reply to an eager request for this privilege. “You would be tempted to be odd and excitable, and then Carry
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