Eleanor A. Ormerod.
CHAPTER XXIV
LETTERS TO PROFESSOR WALLACE ON THE LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Announcement of the Honorary LL.D. to be conferred—Preliminary personal arrangements—Miss Ormerod’s feelings of appreciation and of anxiety—Letters of congratulation.
This chapter is unlike any of the foregoing chapters of correspondence in its purely personal character. Interested readers will not fail to recognise in it the genuine feminine feeling of anxiety at the approach of a trying public ordeal to one so unaccustomed as Miss Ormerod to the pageantry of academic functions. Nor will they fail to appreciate the resolution with which she bore the physical strain put upon one whose strength had been well-nigh spent in the cause of science under a load of years and bodily infirmities.
To Miss E. A. Ormerod.
University of Edinburgh,
February 24, 1900.
Dear Miss Ormerod,—I hasten to announce to you without a moment’s delay that the Senatus of this University have only a minute ago agreed to do our University the distinguished honour of asking you to accept the honorary degree of LL.D. of the University. I may tell you without breaking any confidence that you are not only the first lady who has ever been asked to accept the degree, but it was in view of the necessity of recognising the great and distinguished labours which you have done for Science that regulations were made by which it became possible for us to confer the degree upon a lady. Any little share I had in this matter is more than rewarded by the great gratification which I feel in connection with this proposed act of the Senatus, of which I believe you will most probably hear by the same post from the Principal. Should the announcement come a day later this will serve as a private intimation to yourself. It will be a still further triumph if you feel physically able to come to receive the degree in the presence of an assembly of about 3,000 people—the number who usually attend our graduations. If you are not able to come, of course the degree will be conferred all the same, but personally I would rejoice, if it can be without your running a serious risk, to see you among us and to get your name enrolled among the many distinguished men—all men but yourself—who have distinguished themselves in Science and Literature, and been pleased to accept our degree.—I am, dear Miss Ormerod, yours very sincerely,
Robert Wallace.