She forgot to allow sufficiently for the fighting force of a large minority, led by an angry few.
Meanwhile that wonderful Mother was following the struggle, not indeed with the minute study Miss Du Pre was giving to the question, but with the old unfailing sympathy. Like Miss Pechey’s father, she had been rather staggered at first at the thought of mixed classes, but shortly after this she writes:
“Darling,
I don’t now at all object to mixed classes. As the teaching must at present be given by men, I don’t see why there should not be mixed classes to listen: and I feel confident if you continue to have such a nice set of women, the tone of the young men generally will be greatly raised. If mixed classes answer so well at Zurich and Paris, why not here?—but I confess to great ignorance.”
Intellectually, the supply of women showed no sign of falling short. With the advice and coöperation of Miss Garrett, Lady Amberley had offered a scholarship for competition at the October Matriculation Examination, and S. J.-B. proudly jots down the verdict of the examiners on their work:
“‘Miss Barker’s Logic paper best ever had from medical students.’
‘Miss Bovell’s French best in University except one Frenchman’s.’
‘Miss Walker had the only 100 per cent. in Mathematics.’
Classical examiner wrote,—‘I was very much struck with the accuracy as well as elegance of some papers.‘”
Of course a woman—or a man for that matter—may pass a brilliant examination in Mathematics or Chemistry, and yet be unable to keep her head at a difficult midwifery case; and it was perfectly right and fitting that men doctors should recognize and even emphasize this fact. One would not have wished them to do otherwise. It was fortunate for the women, however, that their opponents were apt to state their case with a conspicuous want of any sense of humour, as the following letter from the Lancet[[66]] sufficiently exemplifies: