My darling, you must come and see us this summer, for, as I tell the other students here, the whole thing is due to you primarily;—when they say that they feel grateful to me for having worked for this, I say, ‘Thank Dr. Sewall,—she made me care for Medicine, and resolve that a thorough education should be open to Englishwomen.’ So I told Dr. Blackwell too when she said something pretty to me. She is very pleased about Edinburgh.
Well, dear child, I have settled down now for the winter in my little new house. It amuses me to hear of your expenses in furnishing. The whole I have spent is under £35,—about $200,—and yet we are very comfortable!
Miss Pechey is very nice and very clever,—you will like her very much, and she is excellent company....
Our classes begin on Nov. 3rd. I am very busy till then.
Your very aff.
S. L. J.-B.”
Busy indeed she was with the great task of finding lecturers. The University of Edinburgh still stood foursquare, and the Professors sat in their comfortable chairs, lecturing to enormous classes of male students. Looking at the question as a sheer matter of business, one asks what inducement had these men to lecture to a handful of women students? S. J.-B., Mrs. Thorne and the others might struggle and pinch to raise the fees of a dozen or more, but what was that to men of assured wealth and position?—men who looked upon a Scots professorship as the topmost rung on the ladder of comfortable success,—men to whom leisure and peace seemed almost a matter of right, an essential part of the prize they had drawn in the lottery of life? Why should they double their work for the sake of this paltry pittance? It was not to be expected that they should have a great enthusiasm for the cause. How could they? They might, it is true, have been possessed of a high sense of the trust conferred on them by their position: but is such a sense in any sphere of life the possession of more than the choicest few?
As regarded the class in Chemistry, everything had gone with delightful smoothness. On July 10th, S. J.-B. had written in her diary, “Dr. Crum Brown agrees,—not a word of demur as to fees,—good fellow,” and a few days later she had received a letter from Dresden in which he said:
“I am convinced that the experiment must be made, and do not wish to place any unnecessary obstacles in the way. I therefore cordially agree to your proposal, on the understanding that the consent of the University Court is obtained, and that the course be conducted in the Chemical Class-room of the University, and be in all respects the same as the ordinary course of Chemistry.”
So far as the work was concerned, one is glad to think that his generosity met with its reward. All the teacher in him must have rejoiced in the mettle of the new students. Miss Pechey, in particular, simply fell upon Chemistry and proceeded to make it her own. In the house of which the furnishing had cost £35, she and S. J.-B. rigged up some kind of laboratory, and carried on experiments with a keenness that to the stern advocate of “limited liability” might well have endangered their success in class examinations.