With best wishes for your success, I am,
Yours very sincerely,
H. Sidgwick.”
On the following day came a letter from Mr. Stuart, offering all the help in his power:
“I hope you will excuse my unceremoniousness in thus writing to you by the belief that I have your success much at heart.”
“My husband and I both think that it would be better not to try Cambridge in the face of Mr. Sidgwick’s opinion,” writes Mrs. Butler. “No one is better able to test the feeling of the University than he. I hope before long England will be ashamed of herself in this matter. We must do all we can by working quietly and extensively on the hearts and consciences of men. I find no man of ordinary candour who is not easily convinced, but the M.D.s will be the obstacle. They hang together so.
Shall you try Edinburgh? If not, do you think of taking a foreign degree? I wish you were an M.D. You would have plenty of patients at once.—myself among the number.”
Thus it came about that when Mrs. Jex-Blake went to visit her son at Cheltenham, S.J.-B. “screwed her courage to the sticking-point,” and went to Edinburgh. The entry in her diary is characteristic:
“Monday, March 15th. To Edinbro. How I dreaded the journey and sequence! On waking,—‘If Thou go not with me, carry me not up hence’!”