“I am much better in health. Why, do you think? I went on Saturday to my uncle’s perfectly quiet house, and out of the 48 hours slept 25!—2½ hours each afternoon, and 10 hours each night.
“I am feeling so much better to-day—I slept well last night. But one of the distressing signs of over-work is disturbed and light sleep, and my brain is so constantly at work in day-time that I need deep sleep. So cause and effect act and react.
“My heart has been wrung too by Mr. Payne’s death. Life seems so full of anguish as one gets older, that at times I seem to have no power of being bright and cheerful.”
In addition to the regular work of the school, and all the claims of outside work and of pupils and friends, there was a large amount of wear and tear inevitable in any undertaking on so vast a scale. There was also much that was painful connected with the success of the public movement, so far as it affected small private schools or the work of ordinary governesses, who all seemed to urge some moral claim to compensation. It was impossible for the kind heart not to suffer even when the clear head denied the validity of the cause of the suffering, as in this letter in reference to one such case:—
“I wonder dear A. does not remember that when a man makes a new invention, and thereby ruins many individuals, he is not expected to compensate them.
“They suffer in the interests of the greater number, and, if wise, direct their efforts towards working the new invention or improving on it. This may seem cruel, but it is not so in the end. There is no reason, human or divine, why A. B. C., etc., should put aside a direct benefit to themselves and others in order to prevent Z. from turning his attention to some other field of work than that he already occupies. It is certain that three hundred girls in one school want as much teaching as thirty girls in ten schools—only they want different teaching.
“Moral—the big school displaces labour, but does not crush it.”
In the mere fact of success itself there was trial enough in many ways. The intensity of her feeling might be sometimes out of due proportion to the cause of suffering, but none the less did she suffer acutely. At the time of greatest triumph—the opening of the new schools in 1879—there chanced to be one example which gave rise to an outbreak of indignation on her part, letting us see how much had hitherto been hidden even from her friends. Of this incident she writes—
“It is of no use to try to please people! I do not mean to try. I will do what seems to me right, and then learn to be content to be abused, if I can! What with every one’s ‘claims,’ and with people’s ‘rights’ to a seat, always the best!—friends, family, parents, old pupils, etc., it is all the same! Every one is dissatisfied, do what one will; some one else is preferred, some one is neglected.... And so the stings go on, till I nearly break down under the wounds they inflict. When barely able to get about again through the work, I hear of my neglect, etc., of one to whom, in my heart of hearts, it never occurred to me as possible that any one could accuse me of ingratitude.
“Pray forgive me, dear Annie, but you can never know the bitter price one pays for success. I think it as heavy as that of failure! This has stirred up a depth of scorn and anger of which I feel ashamed, though I feel almost ashamed, too, of the race of beings to which I belong.