“Mrs. A. tells me Christison actually threatened to resign if women are admitted!—and to the Medical Faculty this is a formidable threat. She thinks also ‘the professors haven’t treated me fairly’ (which I deny) in not letting me know how much they dislike the whole thing. Doubtless A. does,—and the babble of her bourne is magnified to her.
Still I know all is not yet gained. Yet surely very much is. And can ‘He so far have brought me’—? Not that that is a real argument, because if it fails we must suppose failure is right in one sense.
Amusing how much personal power Mrs. A. attributes to me, ‘You’ve just turned them round your thumb,—I don’t believe there’s another woman could have done it,—you are wholly exceptional, etc.’ I say ‘very complimentary, but I think not quite true.’ She thinks I’ve been ‘wonderfully clever,’ and when I object to the phrase, ‘have really shown wonderful power and tact.’
I’m afraid one can’t help being a little pleased to think one’s own effort has done something,—and yet the other feeling lies deeper:
‘If Thou didst will, a mighty sword
Out of my stem should grow.’
By the bye U. D. thinks my poem[[53]] the saddest in the book, ‘Poor child’ [she says] ‘how sorry I am for you! Oh, if the atmosphere of Easter joy which is bright round me were only your’s too, ... Such an “only this,”—it would be better to be in the blackest night with the hope of stumbling into broad daylight some time or other. It is the sort of hopelessness of any more light to come that makes the poem so sad to me.’
I don’t agree. I think the ‘only this’ is just everything,—enough to live on and die on, though not enough (what is?) to prevent life being very hard and stony. It seems to me just the essence of the—
‘... strenuous souls for belief and prayer—
Who stand in the dark on the lowest stair