Dearest Sophy,

I cannot tell you with what a feeling of anguish I heard the door close after you on Saturday when you departed, and I had not kissed or blessed you.... I saw you afterwards in the street, tho’ I was unseen by you, and I could not stop you, my dear child, lest the past should be renewed. On my return I saw your present of fruit, it was not as gratifying to me as the scrap of paper, which contained my Sophy’s acknowledgement of her fault.[[8]] Yet I thank you for the kind thought, as I hope you know me too well to suppose that any little gift can bribe me to forgive;—without that scrap, my Sophy, I should have turned away from receiving your fruit. The same afternoon at a friend’s house I read a portion of your favourite Scott, and could not but think of you while I read the account of the ‘evil and good’ trying for Mastery in Harold the Dauntless’ heart, remember his first act of forbearance was noted as a step towards heaven. Beloved child! do I beseech you remember the duty of a child, be gentle and tender to your dear Parents, then the Lord will love you, and some day the Lion will give place to the Lamb in your bosom. Dear Mary Bayly’s has turned to whooping-cough. I hope yours is better. Until I find where to send her, I cannot leave home. God’s will be done.”

For a year and a half Sophy remained under this lady’s care, and then one or two equally unsuccessful experiments were made. Meanwhile Mrs. Jex-Blake remained so ailing that it was not possible for her to have the child at home for the long vacation, and a “dear kind” lady invites the refractory young person to visit her for part of the time. Mr. Jex-Blake writes to inform Sophy of the fact, and adds, “Now have we not in this great cause of thankfulness to our kind God and Father who never forgets us?” This was perhaps asking a little too much of the homesick child.

The truth is that the parents at this time were not growing younger (as many parents do), and certainly they were growing more staid and set in their ways. It was becoming increasingly difficult to them to adapt themselves to this riotous child. “Avoid excitement which is your great enemy,” writes her Father, unaware perhaps that his own weakness was a tendency to be rather too fussy and precise. With hearts full of love they were demanding of her a standard of excellence which for her was wholly artificial, and in the half-hearted, or at least intermittent, effort to attain it, she fell in the breach. And parents and child were not the only factors in the difficult problem of home life. So long as Sophy could by any stretch of charity be reckoned a child, it was comparatively easy for her brother and sister to put up with her volcanic ways. But from a schoolgirl one expects some conformity to recognized standards, and Sophy’s elder sister had been such a pattern in this respect that the contrast was necessarily acute.

“I really don’t think you would enjoy vexed and all would be uncomfortable” and no one who knew the elder sister can doubt that such demonstrations of affection would probably have “vexed” her more than most. On the other hand “Brother” was now a young man, and if his main desire for the child was that she should grow up like the sisters of other men, he only shared the attitude common at that time to the overwhelming majority of his sex. One can see that his younger sister must have tried him a good deal. The idea that she was plain and even ugly had been firmly impressed upon her: the exhibition of vanity in matters of dress had been discouraged on every ground: and it was natural to her boyish temperament to be careless of such things. When, in addition to these shortcomings, she added a propensity for making people “uncomfortable,” one can quite understand that her brother did not feel specially proud of her, and the strength of her character probably made it difficult for him to influence her through the passionate affection and admiration she had cherished for him all through her childhood. In any case the relation between them became somewhat strained, and it is not surprising if she sometimes attributed the strictures of her parents to his influence and representations.

It is delightful to record that, in spite of countless differences of opinion and much plain speaking on both sides, a fine loyal camaraderie existed between the sisters throughout life.

I don’t know whether it ever occurred to the child to compare her brother’s education with her own. If she had done so, the reflection might well have made her bitter. In athletics as in the schools he was bearing off laurels at every turn, while she was being curbed and thwarted to meet the requirements of pious and half-educated schoolmistresses. From the best of motives her parents refused for her the outlet for the “excitability” they constantly deprecated; in other words they simply sat on the safety valve. In the summer of 1854 she begged—probably not for the first time—to be allowed to have riding lessons. The father replied

“I like to do anything in reason to please my own child, but you are so very excitable and have at present so lamentably little self-command that I should fear riding for you very much. It would do you no good and might be injurious to you in many ways. When will you prove to me that my hopes and expectations of you are not in vain?... You don’t know how the hearing you censured goes to my heart, and the not being able to place the most unbounded confidence in you is very trying to me and the dear Mother,—doubly so to her in her weak state.”

Of course it is easy now to see that he was wrong as regards the riding. Apart altogether from the physical exercise involved, the discipline of it would have been excellent. Big emergencies always braced her. She never lost her temper with a horse, nor her presence of mind in an accident.

Meanwhile the series of loving reproachful letters goes steadily on.