On February 15th, S. J.-B. writes to Dr. Sewall:
“I think I may probably go to Cambridge and see whether there is the least chance of anything medical there. I have almost no hope, but it is thought well to apply at least to the Medical Board just for the principle of the thing. Then I may probably go to Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Glasgow, etc. I understand that Glasgow was expressly founded on the model of Bologna;—now Bologna admitted women!
Did I tell you that there is to be a volume of Essays published in the summer about all sorts of Women’s questions, and I have been asked to write about the Medical question. If I do, I rather think I shall send you my essay to criticise first, shall I?... I wish very much that I could find some English lady to go in for Medicine with me,—it would be such a comfort in thundering at the Colleges, and in working afterwards. There is one very capable woman of about 30,—a thorough lady,—who is staying with us now, who would like extremely to study for many reasons, but is withheld by the great prejudice and very bad health of her mother.”
It was indeed a loss to the whole woman movement that Miss Ursula Du Pre was prevented from taking a more articulate part in it, for one tries in vain to think of one of her contemporaries who was more generously gifted by nature and circumstances. She had mental powers that would have fitted her to shine in almost any of the professions strictly preserved for the benefit of men, great common sense, a finely balanced judgment, and—what appealed to S. J.-B. perhaps more than anything else—a keen and unfailing sense of humour. Tact too she had, and the singular charm of the “great lady” who is at the same time one of the simple-hearted. Deeply religious throughout life, she was absolutely devoid of false humility and of the ultra-sensitiveness that would have rendered her gifts of small avail beyond her own circle. The accident of her sex set her free from the cares and responsibilities of the landowner; and one cannot wonder that S. J.-B. bitterly resented the unalterable decision of some members of her family that a medical career was out of the question.
Nothing, however, can really rob the world of the usufruct of gifts like these. The influence of a man or woman can never be measured by the number of those who experience it at first hand. Who shall say whether it is better to have a thousand disciples, or twelve, or one?
Mrs. Jex-Blake and Mrs. Du Pre had long been acquainted, but it was in this month of January 1869 that the two daughters first met and found each other. S. J.-B. brought much to the friendship, as the reader of the previous volume is aware; her gifts were great, her knowledge of life astonishingly wide for a young woman of her day; but she found no less than she brought. Never again could she complain of the lack of a friend “with whom she could take counsel.” All through the troublous times that were to follow so closely on the inception of their friendship, Miss Du Pre was her admiring critic, her confidante and counsellor, following every move in the complicated game, disapproving, perhaps, sometimes, but sympathising always. She was the friend too of S. J.-B.’s friends and comrades, and in the long days of hope deferred there were those who must surely have fallen in the breach but for Miss Du Pre’s material and spiritual aid.
Meanwhile S. J.-B. wrote the Essay on “Medicine as a Profession for Women,” which was published a few months later in the volume entitled Women’s Work and Women’s Culture. “Fairish, not quite satisfactory,” is her own verdict on the first draft, which was doubtless considerably improved by the suggestions of friendly critics. As the Essay appeared later in her book on Medical Women, it could scarcely be bettered, and indeed it has proved a storehouse of research and argument for all subsequent writers and speakers on the subject.
Professor Newman, to whom Mrs. Butler sent the first draft, wrote an admirable letter:
“I have no learning in the history of female physicians, but I know that in my boyhood I read in a magazine an urgent remonstrance with ladies for their prejudice against man-midwives, of whom the writer speaks as a beneficent innovation. I think I have read that they were first used in the Court circle of Louis XIV.... To prove negatives is always hard, but I should not fear to write that the exclusion of women from acting as physicians to women is quite a modern usurpation by the male sex, and limited to the nations which cultivate modern science. The topic reminds me of the address of the nurse to Queen Phoedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus, when she observes her mistress to be wild and out of health,—‘If thy complaint be anything of a more secret kind, here are women at hand to compose the disease. But, if thy distress be such as may be told to males, tell it in order that it may be communicated to the physicians.’